Angola has called on warring parties in eastern DR Congo to respect a ceasefire from next week, as a UN team landed on Thursday in a town under the control of the M23 armed group for a year.
The ceasefire that begins on February 18 has not yet been agreed upon by the Congolese government and M23, but it would be a major step after months of diplomatic efforts to end the conflict amid ongoing fighting.
The resource-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been mired in unrelenting violence for 30 years by dozens of armed groups.
The region, which borders Rwanda and Burundi, has been targeted by the Rwandan-backed M23 since the group's resurgence in 2021.
Angola has in recent weeks resumed its mediation efforts and made public its proposal for an overnight ceasefire.
This follows the announcement last week that the United Nations will soon send peacekeepers to eastern DR Congo to help enforce any ceasefire.
A senior M23 official interviewed by AFP on Thursday said the anti-government group was "willing" to observe a ceasefire on condition that Congolese armed forces "stop shooting at us".
Contacted by AFP, the government in Kinshasa was not immediately able to respond.
Half a dozen ceasefires and agreements have been signed — and broken — since late 2021, when M23 took up arms again with the support of Rwanda and its army.
M23 fighters captured the provincial capital of North Kivu, Goma, in January last year, as part of a lightning offensive across the east of the country that left thousands dead.
Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, fell the following month.
Since the sharp escalation of fighting, peace efforts led by Qatar and the United States have sought to end the crisis, leading to the signing of two separate agreements.
Qatar has been mediating between the Congolese government and M23 for several months, and a commitment to a ceasefire was signed in July.
In a parallel effort, the DRC and Rwanda formalized a US-brokered peace agreement in December in Washington.
However, the agreements have so far failed to stop the clashes.
The talks are now being led by the African Union (AU), which appointed Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe to lead the mediation. He, in turn, has included Angolan President Joao Lourenco in the negotiations.
In late 2024, a previous mediation attempt led by the president of Angola at the request of the AU failed before a planned summit in Luanda, which was intended to bring together the presidents of Congo and Rwanda.
On Monday, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, who has regularly traveled to Luanda in recent months to meet Lourenco, met with Gnassingbe and former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in the Angolan capital.
The peace agreements provide for the United Nations mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) to monitor events on the ground with a view to implementing a more permanent ceasefire.
The mission is expected to deploy in the coming weeks to Uvira, a town on the border with Burundi that M23 captured in December before withdrawing under pressure from the United States.
The closest UN peacekeeping base to Uvira is in Goma, whose international airport has been closed since the city was occupied.
The UN said earlier this week it had sought "security guarantees" from the warring parties to allow its soldiers to use the key airport.
On Thursday, the acting head of the UN mission in the DRC landed in Goma.
Vivian van de Perre landed in the city on a UN helicopter in what the mission called "a significant moment after a prolonged disruption of air access."
Van de Perre said in a statement that she was going to Goma "to support preparations for the monitoring and verification of the ceasefire."
"There are doubts about the willingness of the parties to reach a negotiated agreement and their mutual trust," said Pierre Boisselet, coordinator of research on violence at the Congolese Ebuteli institute, contacted by AFP.
But he added that pressure from Washington and the M23 withdrawal from Uvira gave him hope that a ceasefire would materialize.
