François Grignon is persona non grata in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The head of political affairs at Monusco, the United Nations mission in the country, is at the heart of a conflict with the Congolese authorities over an email in which he criticized the head of Congolese diplomacy. The diplomat has been absent from the DRC for two months, since his remarks irritated the country’s authorities.
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With our correspondent in Kinshasa, Pascal Mulegwa
“ I would recommend that we keep our distance from her. She is not a friend of MONUSCO. » The sentence, written in an e-mail from François Grignon which was forwarded to a few managers, reached Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of DRC is the person targeted by François Grignon. And these words strained the relationship between the author of the email and the Congolese authorities.
The diplomat of French nationality took a particularly negative view, according to him, of the minister’s campaign for ” resumption of part of the MONUSCO mandate by the office of the special envoy ofUN for the Great Lakes region “. Comments judged “ malicious and compromising » with regard to the head of Congolese diplomacy, who allegedly contacted the head of MONUSCO at the beginning of November to demand the departure of François Grignon.
Officially, Kinshasa had informed MONUSCO that its senior official was no longer welcome either in the Congolese presidency or in Foreign Affairs, two institutions with which he collaborated. Having gone on leave in October, the Frenchman has never returned to Kinshasa. “ It goes without saying that we obtained from his hierarchy his departure without a hitch. “, a Congolese administrative source told RFI.
An African diplomat, stationed in Kinshasa, sees it as a “ gracious courtesy » from the Congolese authorities. “ It would be in my country, we would have expelled him with immediate effect “, he confided.
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