Rwanda-backed rebel militia has seized swathes of the eastern DRC, displacing thousands and triggering a humanitarian crisis. There had been high hopes that the summit hosted by Angola’s President Joao Lourenco the African Union mediator to end the conflict would end with a deal to end the conflict.
But around midday Sunday the head of the Angolan presidency’s media office said it would not go ahead.
Contrary to what we expected, the summit will no longer be held today, media officer Mario Jorge told journalists.
Lourenco was meeting with DRC leader Felix Tshisekedi and without Rwandan President Paul Kagame, he said. The Congolese presidency said that negotiations had hit deadlock over a Rwandan demand that the DRC hold direct dialogue with the Kigali-backed and largely ethnic Tutsi M23 rebels who have since 2021 seized swathes of the eastern DRC.
There is a stalemate because the Rwandans have set as a precondition for the signing of an agreement that the DRC hold a direct dialogue with the M23,” Giscard Kusema, the Congolese presidency spokesman present in Luanda, told AFP. Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said Friday that his country wanted “a firm commitment from the DRC to resume direct talks with the M23 within a well-defined framework and timeframe.
The Congolese government says, however, that the M23 only exists because of Rwandan military support.
If Kigali is in good faith in the negotiations and on its promise to withdraw … its troops from Congolese soil, the conflict will end with the M23, and at the same time it will stop with Rwanda,” a Congolese government source said.
kagame and Tshisekedi last saw each other in October in Paris but did not speak, though they have maintained dialogue through the mediation of Luanda. In early August, Angola mediated a fragile truce that stabilized the situation at the front line, but both sides continued to exchange fire and clashes have intensified since late October.
