The meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) has been extended to March 17th in according to organisers.
The ministers were initially scheduled to meet on Friday, February 28 in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“All the ingredients are in place for a political solution to the conflict in eastern DRC, provided that good faith, political will and common sense prevail in Kinshasa,” Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs said via platform X.
He added, “in this context, it is essential that external actors fully and truly support this African-led process and avoid taking measures motivated by political and/or economic reasons, which would undermine the very process they claim to support,” Nduhungirehe wrote.
Earlier on Thursday the SADC virtual forum ordered for a phased withdrawal of its troops from eastern DRC and immediately called for direct dialogue between Kinshasa and the AFC/M23 rebels starting March 18 in Luanda, Angola.
The forthcoming meeting of Ministers in Harare is in line with the resolutions of the SADC-EAC Joint Summit held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The meeting in Tanzania directed that a joint meeting of ministers of the two organizations be held to deliberate on the report of the Joint Meeting of the Chiefs of Defence Forces (CDF) which called for a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities; the establishment of a technical coordination mechanism at the secretariat level to monitor the implementation of the decisions of the Joint Summit; a detailed roadmap detailing immediate, medium and long-term implementation measures, including funding modalities; and the addressing of all other residual issues related to the achievement of sustainable peace and security in eastern DRC and make appropriate recommendations to the next Joint Meeting of the EAC-SADC Summit.
Following the joint EAC-SADC Summit held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the security situation in eastern DRC, the Heads of State and Government of the two sub-regional blocs took a series of important decisions with immediate effect that respond to the humanitarian emergency, the pressing need for de-escalation and Kinshasa’s expectations to come to the aid of the suffering populations of Goma, in North Kivu.
