Boris will meet Charles in wake of Rwanda row
BORIS Johnson will hold one- on- one talks with Prince Charles tomorrow after the heir to the throne condemned the Government’s Rwanda asylum policy.
Charles privately branded plans to send Channel migrants to the African country ‘appalling’.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has briefed senior figures at Clarence House on the policy this week in the hope of softening the prince’s opposition before his meeting with Mr Johnson in the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Both are attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), at which Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall are representing the Queen.
The royal couple – the first members of the family to visit Rwanda – yesterday toured memorials to victims of the ethnic genocide that left 800,000 dead in the country in 1994.
Charles looked distressed at the Nyamata Church Genocide Memorial, 19 miles south of Kigali, where more than 10,000 were killed over two days.
He viewed hundreds of skulls bearing slash marks from machetes, as well as bloodstained baby clothes worn by murdered infants.
Earlier he and Camilla toured
the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where they learnt about the wholesale slaughter of children during a 100-day killing spree in which Hutu militiamen targeted mainly minority Tutsis.
Ahead of tomorrow’s private meeting between the prince and Prime Minister, sources said they would have a ‘cup of a tea and a catch-up’, although Mr Johnson’s spokesman described it as a ‘bilateral discussion’.
They are expected to discuss the summit but could also tackle other issues such as Charles’s controversial comments.
After reports about the heir’s private remarks, the Prime Minister dismissed criticism of the Rwanda migrant policy from ‘unexpected quarters’.
It will be the first time the pair
have spoken since the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee service.
The first flight removing asylum seekers to Rwanda was due to take off last week but was grounded by legal challenges.
Mr Johnson will attend this week’s summit with wife Carrie, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and COP president Alok Sharma.
He is not planning to visit accommodation earmarked for the migrant scheme but No 10 said it was likely he would discuss it with Rwandan president Paul Kagame.
Also on the agenda this week is the selection of the next Commonwealth secretary-general. Mr Johnson opposes the incumbent, Labour peer Baroness Scotland, instead backing Jamaica’s Kamina Johnson Smith.