Angolan President Joao Lourenço, the African Union (AU)-appointed mediator in the conflict in eastern DR Congo, said on Thursday during a visit to Pretoria, South Africa that a peace deal could be signed at the end of the next summit between Kagame and Tshisekedi in Luanda on Sunday.
“We are very hopeful that this meeting will lead to the signing or the decision to pen a lasting peace agreement between the two neighbouring countries in the near future,” he said.
Since November 2021, the M23 (March 23 Movement), an armed group backed by Kigali and its army, has seized large swathes of the mineral-rich east of the DRC, which has been blighted by violence for 30 years.
Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, with an estimated population of over a million and nearly a million war-displaced people crammed into camps, is surrounded by rebels and Rwandan army units.
At the end of October, the DRC and Rwanda had already approved a roadmap setting out the arrangements for the withdrawal of Rwandan troops and the neutralisation of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) by the Congolese army. Th FDLR, formed by former Hutu leaders of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who have since fled to the DRC to fight the M23 and a nebulous group of pro-Kinshasa militias in the east, represents a permanent threat to Kigali.
Ninety days
The roadmap, known in military lingo as CONOPs and seen by AFP, provides for a period of just 90 days to “complete the neutralisation of the FDLR and the lifting of Rwanda’s defensive measures.”
An initial “harmonised plan” to end the crisis, dated August, made the neutralisation of the FDLR a precondition for the withdrawal of Rwandan soldiers. It was rejected by the DRC, which demanded ‘simultaneous operations’.
Kigali confirmed to AFP that Paul Kagame, accompanied by his foreign minister Olivier Nduhungirehe, would be in Angola on Sunday to resume talks.
The Congolese presidency has also confirmed that Félix Tshisekedi will attend the summit, despite Kinshasa’s repeated refusal to negotiate with Rwanda and calls for international sanctions against its neighbour.
“Our country continues to face persistent rebellions, including aggression by the Rwandan army and the M23 terrorists,” Mr Tshisekedi said in a speech to parliament on Wednesday, describing the rebels and Rwanda as “enemies of the republic.”
The Congolese and Rwandan presidents last met in Paris in October. Although the idea of a meeting during the summit of the French-speaking community was mooted, it never materialised and the two men never exchanged a glance, despite being just metres apart.
Half a dozen ceasefires and truces have been declared and then violated in the east of the DRC.
At the end of July, after two and a half years of clashes and broken agreements, a new ceasefire was signed. It has already been undermined by at least one recent M23 offensive and regular clashes between the rebels and the Congolese army in recent weeks.
AFP-TE/sf/lb/as/APA