BRUSSLES: The EU is expected to sanction nine individuals in connection with violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two EU diplomats said on Friday.
\nThey did not identify the people set to be listed, in keeping with the practice of not revealing such details before the sanctions are officially approved.
\nEU foreign ministers are expected to approve the sanctions in Brussels next Monday.
\nRebels of the M23 group have seized east Congo\u2019s two biggest cities since January in an escalation of a long-running conflict rooted in the spillover into Congo of Rwanda\u2019s 1994 genocide and the struggle for control of Congo\u2019s vast mineral resources.<\/p>\n
Congo is considering sending representatives to peace talks with the M23 group that Angola plans to host next week, government sources said on Thursday.
\nRwanda is accused of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebels, a charge it denies.
\nThe EU summoned the ambassador of Rwanda last month, calling on the country to \u201cimmediately withdraw\u201d troops from Congolese territory and to \u201cstop supporting the M23 and any other armed group.\u201d
\nEU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has also said that the 27-nation bloc will review its agreement with Rwanda over critical raw materials due to the country\u2019s links with the M23 rebels.
\nRwanda denies providing arms and troops to M23 rebels.
\nCongo\u2019s government has said at least 7,000 people have died in the fighting since January.
\nAccording to the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, at least 600,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since November.
\nWith Congo\u2019s army and allied forces putting up weak resistance to the rebel advance, regional powers appear in agreement that dialogue is the only way forward, diplomats and analysts said.
\n\u201cI haven\u2019t talked to a single African country that says Kinshasa shouldn\u2019t talk to M23,\u201d one senior diplomat said.
\n\u201cThe line of everyone is, \u2018How do you stop the fighting if you don\u2019t engage with them?\u2019\u201c
\nOne source said on Friday that government participation was a sure thing but that it was still too early to say who would represent Kinshasa in Luanda.
\nOther sources said the debate was still ongoing and a final decision would not likely be made until next week.
\nM23, for its part, said on Thursday it was demanding an unequivocal commitment from DRC President Felix Tshisekedi to engage in talks.
\nBoth sides said they had questions about the framework and how the Angola-hosted talks would comply with decisions from regional bodies attempting to resolve the conflict.
\nSouthern and East African foreign and defense ministers are due to meet in Harare on Monday to discuss the push for a cessation of hostilities and political dialogue.
\nSitting down with M23 would likely be deeply unpopular in Kinshasa, especially after Tshisekedi\u2019s repeated vows never to do so.
\nBut it would amount to an acknowledgment that Tshisekedi\u2019s pursuit of a military solution has \u201cfailed,\u201d said Congolese analyst Bob Kabamba of the University of Liege in Belgium.
\n\u201cKinshasa\u2019s position of dialogue is understandable because it finds itself stuck, thinking that the (rebel alliance) must not reach a critical threshold,\u201d he said.
\nStephanie Wolters, a Congo analyst with South Africa\u2019s Institute for Security Studies, said Angola had \u201cclearly decided that it is necessary to intervene to prevent the advance of the M23 toward the west of the DRC.\u201d
\nThe lack of faith in Tshisekedi\u2019s ability to turn the tide militarily was also seen this week in Southern African leaders\u2019 approval of the \u201cphased withdrawal\u201d of a regional deployment known as SAMIDRC that had a mandate to fight rebels.
\nAlthough the deployment was too weak to mean much in the fight against M23, its presence was an essential sign of regional support for Congo, Wolters said, making its departure a \u201csignificant blow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSLES: The EU is expected to sanction nine individuals in connection with violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two EU diplomats said on Friday. They did not identify the people set to be listed, in keeping with the practice of not revealing such details before the sanctions are officially approved. EU foreign ministers are …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78444,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78424\/revisions\/78444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}