GOMA (Congo), Dec 5: Congo’s government will meet eastern Tutsi rebels in Kenya on Monday for their first direct talks to formalise a ceasefire and discuss a peace process after weeks of fighting, the foreign minister said on Friday.

Alexis Thambwe Mwamba made the announcement after a meeting with his Rwandan counterpart Rosemary Museminali which also agreed on a joint plan of operations to disband Rwandan Hutu rebels based in Democratic Republic of Congo’s lawless east.

Tutsi insurgent leader General Laurent Nkunda has been demanding direct talks with President Joseph Kabila’s government as a condition for ending his revolt in North Kivu province, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled fighting.

The announcement of talks followed weeks of diplomacy led by Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president and now a UN special envoy, and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.

“A meeting between representatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo and from the CNDP, under the auspices of United Nations and African Union facilitators, will take place on Dec 8, at Nairobi, Kenya to formalise the ceasefire and discuss a peace plan for eastern Congo,” Mwamba said.

Nkunda has justified his rebellion by saying his fighters were battling to protect fellow Tutsis from the Hutu rebels, known as the FDLR, some of whom took part in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Since late August, Nkunda’s battle-hardened guerrilla force has routed the government army and seized swathes of North Kivu in a major embarrassment for Kabila, who won 2006 elections intended to end decades of chaos, war and mismanagement.

Congo’s government had resisted direct talks with Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) rebels, insisting instead that they return to a wider peace pact signed in January with several armed groups. But the military defeats have left it with few options.

Few details were given about the planned talks but Western diplomats said that they would be conducted by delegations and not Kabila and Nkunda personally.

—Reuters