East African leaders hold summit on DR Congo unrest

East African leaders were holding a regional summit in Burundi on Saturday to discuss ways of calming the raging conflict in eastern DR Congo.

The talks are being hosted in Burundi's economic hub Bujumbura by the East Africa Community, which is leading mediation efforts to end the fighting in the restive east of the giant central African nation.

Among those attending are Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi as well as President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, which is accused of backing the resurgent M23 rebels who have captured swathes of land in the eastern DRC.

"Discussions are expected to focus on evaluating the Luanda roadmap which demanded the effective and definitive withdrawal of M23/RDF (Rwanda Defence Forces) troops from occupied zones before January 15," the Congolese presidency said on Facebook, referring to a deal reached in Angola in July last year.

"The terrorist troops from M23 have never left these zones, on the contrary the M23 and its allies have expanded their areas of occupation."

Kagame is on his first visit to Burundi since 2013 when he attended independence celebrations, with tensions high between the neighbours.

Other heads of state attending the summit, which opened in the early afternoon according to the Burundi government, include Kenya's President William Ruto, Uganda's veteran leader Yoweri Museveni and Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania.

The EAC groups Burundi, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

'Brutal atrocities'

The meeting is being held shortly after a visit by Pope Francis to Kinshasa, where he met victims of the conflict and condemned the "inhumane violence" and "brutal atrocities" taking place.

Militias have plagued the mineral-rich region for decades, many of them a legacy of regional wars that flared during the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Since November 2021, the M23 has seized chunks of territory in the east and come within miles (kilometres) of its main commercial hub Goma.

The DRC accuses its smaller central African neighbour Rwanda of backing the M23, something UN experts, the United States and other Western countries agree with. Kigali denies the charge.

Last week, Qatar had planned to host a meeting between Tshisekedi and Kagame, but diplomats said the Congolese leader refused to attend.

Tensions between the two countries were exacerbated last week when Rwandan forces opened fire at a Congolese fighter jet they said had violated Rwandan airspace.

Kinshasa described it as an attack that amounted to "an act of war".

The summit also signals a possible rapprochement between Burundi and Rwanda, two tiny countries in the Great Lakes region of central Africa that have long had tempestuous relations, each accusing the other of interfering in their internal affairs.

In 2020, Kagame urged the then newly-elected Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye to reset diplomatic ties but his overture was rejected as "hypocritical".

Burundi has accused Rwanda of harbouring those behind a failed 2015 coup that plunged the country into violent chaos.

The EAC decided to create a military force to pacify eastern Congo last year, with the first troops arriving in Goma in November.

The soldiers are permitted to use force to dislodge M23 fighters but they have not yet done so.

Kenya's former president Uhuru Kenyatta, who is mediating on behalf of the EAC, last month voiced concern over the "sharply deteriorating" situation in the east.

txw-strs/ach