The leaders of Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda will attend a regional summit in Uganda on Saturday after rebels seized the main eastern Congolese city of Goma, Ugandan officials said on Thursday.
African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will also attend the extraordinary summit of the 11-member regional bloc, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).
DR Congo’s Joseph Kabila and rival Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame – whom the United Nations accuses of backing the M23 rebels who seized the city of Goma on Tuesday, claims Kigali rejects – will be at the Kampala summit.
“They are attending,” said Asuman Kiyingi, Ugandan state minister for regional cooperation. “It would be meaningless without them.”
Dlamini-Zuma will attend as part of AU “efforts aimed at finding a lasting solution to the crisis in the North Kivu region of the DRC”, the pan-African bloc said in a statement.
Kabila and Kagame met on Tuesday and Wednesday, hours after the capture of Goma, issuing a joint statement with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni calling for the M23 to stop its offensive and pull out of Goma.