A spokesperson for DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi told the Reuters news agency that they had received an invitation from Angola for the talks.
The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels will hold talks next week, mediator Angola has announced.
A statement from President Joao Lourenco’s office on Wednesday said the two parties would begin “direct peace negotiations” in the Angolan capital Luanda on March 18.
Angola has previously acted as a mediator in the eastern DRC conflict that escalated in late January when the M23 took control of the strategic eastern Congo city of Goma. In February, M23 seized Bukavu, eastern Congo’s second-biggest city.
Rwanda denies backing the M23 armed group in the conflict, which is rooted in the spread of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide into DRC, and the struggle for control of DRC’s vast mineral resources.
DRC President Felix Tshisekedi was in Angola on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of talks and his spokesperson Tina Salama told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday that the government had received an invitation from Angola but did not say whether it would participate in the talks.
M23 leader Bertrand Bisimwa wrote on X that the rebels had forced Tshisekedi to the negotiating table, calling it “the only civilized option to resolve the current crisis that has lasted for decades.”
The government has said at least 7,000 people have died in the conflict since January.
Last week, the United Nations refugee agency reported that nearly 80,000 people have fled the country due to the armed conflict. Since January, 61,000 have arrived in neighbouring Burundi, the agency’s deputy director of international protection, Patrick Eba, said.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups vying to control resources in eastern Congo, home to vast 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 fears of an all-out regional war that could resemble the Congo wars of the 1990s and early 2000s that killed millions of people.
