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Angolan President Joao Lourenco hosted a mini-summit in Addis Ababa Friday to revive peace in the violence-wracked eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, an African Union (AU) source said.
The meeting came on the eve of a two-day AU summit that opens in the Ethiopian capital on Saturday.
Several diplomatic efforts have so far failed to quell the violence between the M23 rebel group and the Congolese army in the mineral-rich east of the vast central African nation.
“It has just started,” the source told AFP, without providing further details on the Addis Ababa meeting.
Angolan state news agency Angop said the mini-summit would “discuss the relaunch of the peace process” in the eastern DRC, where clashes have intensified in recent days.
It said Lourenco was expected to be joined by the leaders of Burundi, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan and Tanzania.
But it was not confirmed which leaders were due to attend the talks, which began shortly after the arrival of DRC President Felix Tshisekedi in Addis Ababa.
#DRC–#Rwanda : Angolan President Joao Lourenco hosted a mini-summit in Addis Ababa Friday to revive peace in the violence-wracked eastern Congo. Several diplomatic efforts have so far failed to quell the violence between the M23 rebel group and the Congolese army in the… pic.twitter.com/KTxczrUWda
— Saleh Mwanamilongo (@SMwanamilongo1) February 16, 2024
Militias have plagued the eastern DRC for decades, many of them a legacy of regional wars fought in the 1990s and the early 2000s.
The mostly Tutsi M23 has seized vast swathes of North Kivu province since emerging from dormancy in late 2021.
Kinshasa, along with the United Nations and Western countries, accuses DR Congo’s much smaller neighbour Rwanda of backing the rebels, a charge Kigali denies.
The UN Security Council said on Monday it was concerned by “escalating violence” in the eastern region.
The latest flare-up has forced thousands of civilians to flee the town of Sake on the way to Goma, the capital of North Kivu.
According to a UN document seen by AFP on Monday, the Rwandan army is using sophisticated weapons such as surface-to-air missiles to support M23.
UN forces have been in the DRC for nearly 25 years, but have been accused of failing to protect civilians from armed groups.
Yesterday evening at @_AfricanUnion HQ, President @PaulKagame attended a mini-summit hosted by President João Lourenço @jlprdeangola of Angola to address the root causes of the ongoing security in Eastern DRC, including bad governance and ethnic discrimination.@EastAfricaGov pic.twitter.com/5qgR4sjdfW
— EAC-IPU Rwanda 🇷🇼 (@EAC_IPU_Rwa) February 16, 2024
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