President Kagame of Rwanda has spent a lifetime defying the odds. The crisis unfolding across the border in eastern Congo is only his latest calculated gamble.

Far from being just another episode in a centuries-old ethnic conflict, the lightning advance by the renegade Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda on the provincial capital of Goma is a bold move in a broad strategy to secure Rwandan control of North Kivu province and parts of South Kivu.

A close British ally, Rwanda long ago dropped any thoughts of annexing the region, which is rich in virtually every mineral known to man and now believed also to hold huge reserves of oil and gas. Instead, after two invasions in the 1990s, ostensibly to track down Hutu extremists who fled there after carrying out the 1994 genocide of nearly a million Rwandan Tutsis, Rwanda has made clear that it will settle for a more limited de facto control.

This would lead to Rwandan proxies - fellow Tutsis such as General Nkunda and his sidekick Jean Bosco Ntaganda - occupying key posts in the regional and federal governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo, nominally reporting to the capital Kinshasa but owing allegiance to the small country across the border. In return, the Democratic Republic of Congo would be granted peace and would regain formal sovereignty over lands where it has no real control.

President Kagame, who fled anti-Tutsi pogroms at the age of 3 and grew up in exile in Uganda, is convinced that only such a solution can secure Rwanda's security interests. As a Tutsi, he blames France and the United Nations for failing to stop the 1994 genocide and passionately believes that only fellow Tutsis will stop future attacks on his country.

The fact that vast amounts of money from mining and timber in Congo pass through his capital, Kigali, and help to finance the region's best fighting force is conveniently left to one side. Britain and other Western powers, guilty over their inaction during the genocide, have tended to sympathise with Mr Kagame's “legitimate” security concerns.

Congolese and Rwandan Tutsis are essentially the same people, split by a border created by 19th-century colonialists. General Nkunda, whose militia is trained, organised and supplied by Kigali, was born in Rwanda but raised on the Congolese side of the border. Without Kigali's support, he would not survive long.

Mr Kagame has watched with mounting anger as his fellow Congolese Tutsis faced renewed marginalisation: 3 per cent of the population, they were voiceless after UN-organised elections in 2006. Far from bringing them into the new administration, the new Government declared General Nkunda a wanted man and sought to incorporate his militia into a new national army.

Such a result is unacceptable to Mr Kagame. With the eyes of the world on the American elections and the global economic crisis, two weeks ago he gave the green light to his proxy to show who has the real muscle in the area.

That achieved, General Nkunda yesterday called for direct talks with the Congolese Government. If they fail, he will take Goma and then renew the call.

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