Southern African leaders to discuss Congo situation on Sunday

Nov 5, 2008, 18:50 GMT

Johannesburg - Leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are to meet in South Africa on Sunday for talks on the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, South African officials said Wednesday.

South Africa's Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the extraordinary summit of the 15-member regional grouping would hear the latest on negotiations for political power-sharing in Zimbabwe. South African President Kgalema Motlanthe is to chair the gathering.

The summit is expected to follow a regional summit on the situation in the DR Congo scheduled to take place in Kenya on Friday. The presidents of DR Congo and Rwanda, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, will definitely attend the summit at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in downtown Nairobi, Patrick Wamoto, the head of the African and African Union Directorate in Kenya's Foreign Ministry told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa earlier Wednesday.

Renewed fighting between rebels and pro-government militia continued in the DR Congo for a second day Wednesday. Tens of thousands of civilians have displaced after rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's forces routed the Congolese army in North Kivu came within reach of its capital Goma last week.

Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe and pro-democracy leader Morgan Tsvangirai have failed to conclude a deal agreed to on September 15 and aimed at ending the country's long-running political and economic crisis.