Pretoria - Foreign ministers of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) countries are meeting in Luanda today, to discuss the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South Africa will be represented by International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who arrived in Angola on Tuesday.
According to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), the meeting will consider the political and security situation in the DRC, especially in the eastern part of that country, following the surrender of the M23, and the beginning of a process of voluntary disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The Eastern DRC - a mineral-rich region - has been at the centre of a political and ethnic conflict involving its neighbours to the east, Uganda and Rwanda, for two decades.
The meeting is attended by ministers and senior officials representing member states of the ICGLR and SADC, and is part of a process agreed to during the first historic Joint Summit of the SADC and ICGLR held in November in Pretoria.
The meeting forms part of concerted efforts by the two regional bodies to bring stability in the DRC. – SAnews.gov.za
