‘M23 rebels to talk with Congolese government in Uganda’
The March 23 movement (M23) rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are set to hold talks with the government in a bid to “resolve the conflict” in the eastern part of the war-torn country.
“Delegations from the DRC government and M23 shall begin preliminary meetings tomorrow in the [Ugandan] capital Kampala,” Ugandan government spokesman Fred Opolot said on Thursday.
On Monday, the M23 rebels, who had retreated from the eastern Congolese city of Goma two days earlier, threatened to retake the city if Congolese President Joseph Kabila would not agree to negotiate with them.
The Rwanda-backed M23 rebels seized Goma on November 20 after United Nations peacekeepers gave up the battle for the frontier city of one million people, which is the capital of North Kivu province.
The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.
Since early May, over 750,000 people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. Most of them have resettled inside Congo, but tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.
Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.
