A spokesman for DRC president Felix Tshisekedi told Reuters that they had been invited by Angola for consultation.
The Democratic Republic of Congo government and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels will hold talks next week, Angola announced.
A statement from President Joao Lurenko’s office on Wednesday said “direct peace negotiations” would begin on March 18th in Luanda, Angola’s capital.
Angola has previously acted as a mediator in the Eastern DRC conflict that escalated in late January, when M23 ruled the strategic Eastern Congo city of Soma. In February, M23 seized Bukabu, the second largest city in eastern Congo.
Rwanda has denied the spread of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide to the DRC and the support of the M23 armed groups in conflict rooted in the struggle for control of the DRC’s vast mineral resources.
DRC President Felix Zisekedi was in Angola on Tuesday, discussing possible consultations, and his spokesmantina Salama told Reuters on Wednesday that the government received an invitation from Angola but did not say whether it would take part in the consultations.
M23 leader Bertrand Bissimwa wrote to X that rebels forced Tshisekedi to the negotiation table, calling it “the only civilized option to resolve the current crisis that has been going on for decades.”
The government says at least 7,000 people have been killed in the conflict since January.
Last week, the UN refugee agency reported that around 80,000 people fled the country due to armed conflict. Since January, 61,000 people have arrived in neighbouring Burundi, said Patrick EBA, the agency’s director of International Protection.
The M23 is one of approximately 100 armed groups fighting to control resources in eastern Congo, with vast reserves of strategic minerals such as cortan, cobalt, copper and lithium.
DRC neighbors, including South Africa, Burundi and Uganda, have troops stationed in Eastern Congo, raising the horrors of an all-out regional war that could resemble the Congo war of the 1990s and early 2000s, when they killed millions of people.
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