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Congo Says To Sign Peace Deal With M23 Rebels On Monday
Congolese soldiers gather for a military brief after M23 rebel fighters surrendered in Chanzo village in the Rutshuru territory near the eastern town of Goma November 5, 2013. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Kenny Katombe.
By John Irish
08/11/2013
PARIS (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo will sign a peace deal on Monday with the M23 rebel group that laid down its arms this week after a string of military defeats, Congo's Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda told Reuters on Friday.
The Tutsi-led M23, the most important rebel movement in lawless eastern Congo, announced on Tuesday it would disband after a 20-month uprising that displaced some 800,000 people. A two-week U.N.-backed army offensive had dislodged M23 from its last hilltop strongholds near the Rwandan and Ugandan borders.
M23's announcement raised hope for greater stability after two decades of violence in eastern Congo partly motivated by ethnic tensions and combat over rich mineral deposits in which millions of people have died.
"It was decided one day after the M23 declaration renouncing the rebellion that the government would give them five days before the signing," Tshibanda said on a visit to Paris. "Those five days end on Monday, so the signing is on Monday."
"This signature is important because it in essence focuses on M23 going into barracks, disarming and demobilising, and to resolve other problems that were discussed in talks we previously held," he said, referring to long-running negotiations in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
A Ugandan government spokesman said the signing would take place in Kampala.
Tshibanda said the Congolese government had received confirmation from Ugandan authorities that they had detained M23's military chief Sultani Makenga after he fled eastern Congo.
"Mr Makenga must answer for the crimes he has committed. In the discussions in Kampala it was clear there would be no amnesty for war crimes," he said.
The Congolese government would now target other foreign rebel groups operating in the east of its territory, Tshibanda said. He singled out the Rwandan Hutu FDLR movement, Burundi's FNL and the Ugandan Islamist movement ADF-NALU.
"All groups are targeted because we have said that this time we must sign the death certificate of all these groups, these negative forces to the east of our country," he said.
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