{The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the defeated M23 rebels will Monday sign a peace deal, Uganda said, adding that it will not send the fleeing insurgents back across the border.}
The M23 on Tuesday ended its 18-month insurgency after a resounding defeat at the hands of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Since then the majority of its fighters have fled across the border into Uganda.
“The agreement is ready and we are expecting everybody to return Monday to sign it,” Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo told AFP of the deal.
“The agreement will detail how each case will be handled. There are those that are under US and UN sanctions, those who want to be reintegrated in the army, and those who simply want to go home,” Opondo said.
The peace talks, which started in December, had made little headway until the DRC army started to get the upper hand militarily in recent weeks.
One of the major stumbling blocks had been the fate of around 100 M23 officers who have taken part in a series of rebellions over the past 15 years and that Kinshasa did not want to see reincorporated into its army.
Opondo said that the United Nations and the African Union, which backed the peace process, would attend Monday’s ceremony.
He also confirmed that the military chief of the March 23 Movement, a group formed 18 months ago, and which both Rwanda and Uganda have been accused of backing, is on Ugandan terrirtory.
“Yes, Sultani Makenga is with us,” he told AFP, refusing to reveal the rebel chief’s whereabouts.
Uganda will not hand over M23 rebels who fled after being defeated, the spokesman for the army and the defence ministry said.
“They are not prisoners; they are soldiers running away from a war so we are receiving them and helping them because it is our responsibility,” Colonel Paddy Ankunda told AFP, adding that Uganda had also welcomed fleeing soldiers from the DRC’s national army earlier in the year.
AFP
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