UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday demanded the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) “territorial integrity” be respected and a regional war avoided, at an African summit the day after Rwandan-backed fighters seized a second DRC provincial capital.
With international pressure mounting on Rwanda to curb the fighting in eastern DRC, the conflict was set to dominate the African Union (AU) summit, which opened in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Saturday morning.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame was seen attending meetings at the gathering.
Photo: Reuters
However, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi was absent from the summit as fighters from the M23 group took more territory.
Having routed the Congolese army to capture the key provincial capital of Goma in North Kivu last month, the Rwandan-backed armed group has since pushed into neighbouring South Kivu.
It took a key airport there before marching largely unchecked into the city of Bukavu on Friday, security and humanitarian sources said.
“The fighting that is raging in South Kivu — as a result of the continuation of the M23 offensive — threatens to push the entire region over the precipice,” Guterres said without mentioning Rwanda.
He urged dialogue, saying a regional escalation must be avoided “at all costs” with “no military solution.”
“The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DRC must be respected,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron on X said he had spoken with Tshisekedi while stressing the need for Rwanda to back urgent measures including an M23 withdrawal from Bukavu and a ceasefire.
The AU has been criticized for its timid approach in the face of a possible regional conflagration.
The EU on Saturday said it was “urgently” considering all options following the news from Bukavu.
“The ongoing violation of the DRC’s territorial integrity will not go unanswered,” it said.
Guterres in a later press conference said that Africa was “the key to the solution of the problem.”
A meeting of the AU’s Peace and Security Council dedicated to the conflict ran late into Friday evening, with neither Kagame nor Tshisekedi attending.
A government source said Tshisekedi would not be at the summit either as he had to “closely follow the situation on the ground.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS