12/04/2012 16:53 GMT
by Max Delany and Stephanie Aglietti
GOMA, DR Congo, Dec 04, 2012 (AFP) - Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo will hold peace talks with government officials in Uganda, officials said Tuesday in Goma, the key mining hub that the guerrillas seized before pulling out.
Negotiations will begin "in the next few days in Kampala," Interior Minister Richard Muyej Mangez said, a day after soldiers returned to the strategic eastern city, the capital of the mineral-rich province of North Kivu.
M23's political leader Jean-Marie Runiga said the rebels were "ready" for talks, which are expected to include a raft of potential rebel demands, including major political reform for the war-weary region.
The rebels' lightning capture of Goma on November 20, eight months after the army mutineers launched an uprising against the government, had sparked fears of a wider war and major humanitarian crisis.
Their withdrawal was widely welcomed, although rebels still remain close to the city, and have not yet pulled back the full 20 kilometres (12 miles) agreed in a regionally brokered deal.
Mangez said the government would send a "full team" including leaders of key institutions, civil society leaders and members of the national assembly and senate.
However, it is not expected that President Joseph Kabila -- who the rebels have demanded step down from power -- will attend initial negotiations.
Dozens of government army trucks crammed with heavily armed soldiers entered Goma on Monday to secure the city of a million people and reassert their authority after 12 days of rebel rule.
The regional capital was slowly returning to normal life, with commercial banks opening Tuesday, and ferries on Lake Kivu, a major traffic route, due to resume on Wednesday, officials said.
At the same time, UN experts produced what they said was new evidence that "strongly upholds" previous accusations that Rwanda and Uganda had backed the M23, although both sides rejected the report.
"We have been, and are still involved in, the search for peace and stability in DRC," Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told reporters in Kigali.
"Political talks is the next step after M23 withdraw from Goma."
But the report, obtained by AFP on Monday, says that Rwanda and Uganda helped the M23 stage their offensive, with more than a thousand Rwandan troops joining the force that took Goma as Uganda provided "logistics" support.
"Sources estimated that, in total, well over 1,000 RDF (Rwandan) troops came from Rwanda to assist M23", the report read.
Both Kigali and Kampala have strongly denied involvement in the conflict.
Britain last week froze $33.7 million (25.9 million euros) in aid to Rwanda following what it said was "credible and compelling reports of Rwandan involvement with M23".
"Aid is not charity nor everlasting," Mushikiwabo added. "Rwanda and Africa are getting ready for the post-aid era and that era is coming."
Eastern DR Congo, which borders Rwanda and Uganda, was the cradle of back-to-back wars that drew in much of the region from 1996 to 2003 and were fought largely over its vast wealth of copper, diamonds, gold and coltan, a key mobile phone component.
The instability there has been exacerbated by the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when Hutus implicated in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi victims fled across the border after Tutsi leader Paul Kagame came to power.
Tensions remain high in the war-blighted region, and both government soldiers and rebels have been accused of civilian killings, rape and looting during the latest unrest.
While local officials have said Goma's airport will open Thursday, for now the entrance is blocked by UN soldiers in tanks, while plans to deploy a mixed detachment of rebel, government and Tanzanian troops are delayed by logistical problems.
But the UN-backed Radio Okapi, the country's largest station and key source of independent news, which was jammed Saturday shortly after airing an interview with the M23, was heard back on air in Kinshasa Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear if it had resumed operations in the Goma region too.
The M23 was founded by former fighters in a Tutsi rebel group whose members were integrated into the regular army under a 2009 peace deal that they claim was never fully implemented. Several of its leaders have been hit by UN sanctions over alleged atrocities.
Aid agencies are struggling to cope with the region's newly displaced, with some 285,000 people having fled their homes since the rebels began their uprising in April.
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