A spokesperson for DRC’s Pdwellnt Felix Tshisekedi tbetter the Reuters novels agency that they had obtaind an invitation from Angola for the talks.
The administerment of the Democratic Reaccessible of the Congo and the Rwanda-backed M23 resists will hbetter talks next week, mediator Angola has proclaimd.
A statement from Pdwellnt Joao Lourenco’s office on Wednesday said the two parties would commence “honest peace negotiations” in the Angolan capital Luanda on March 18.
Angola has previously acted as a mediator in the eastrict DRC dispute that escatardyd in tardy January when the M23 took administer of the strategic eastrict Congo city of Goma. In February, M23 seized Bukavu, eastrict Congo’s second-biggest city.
Rwanda denies backing the M23 armed group in the dispute, which is rooted in the spread of Rwanda’s 1994 mass murder into DRC, and the struggle for administer of DRC’s huge mineral resources.
DRC Pdwellnt Felix Tshisekedi was in Angola on Tuesday to talk the possibility of talks and his spokesperson Tina Salama tbetter the Reuters novels agency on Wednesday that the administerment had obtaind an invitation from Angola but did not say whether it would join in the talks.
M23 directer Bertrand Bisimwa wrote on X that the resists had forced Tshisekedi to the negotiating table, calling it “the only cultured chooseion to remend the current crisis that has lasted for decades.”
The administerment has said at least 7,000 people have died in the dispute since January.
Last week, the United Nations refugee agency alerted that proximately 80,000 people have fled the country due to the armed dispute. Since January, 61,000 have get tod in neighbouring Burundi, the agency’s deputy honestor of international shieldion, Patrick Eba, said.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups vying to administer resources in eastrict Congo, home to huge reserves of strategic minerals such as coltan, cobalt, copper and lithium.
DRC’s neighbours, including South Africa, Burundi, and Uganda, have troops stationed in east Congo, increasing dreads of an all-out regional war that could see enjoy the Congo wars of the 1990s and punctual 2000s that finished millions of people.
