Congo M23 rebels agree to withdraw from Goma -Uganda military chief

The leader of the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colonel Sultani Makenga, has agreed to withdraw his forces from the eastern cities of Goma and Sake, the Ugandan military chief said on Tuesday.
   
"We met last night and I communicated to him the decision of regional leaders reached on Saturday and he accepted to pull back his forces out of Goma and Sake and also stop any further advances southward," Uganda's chief of defense forces, Aronda Nyakayirima, told Reuters.
   
"He didn't put up any conditions for pulling out because he agreed that all their grievances will be resolved in the ICGLR (Great Lakes) mechanism as stipulated in the declarations of the Saturday summit (in Kampala)," he said.
   
There was no immediate comment from the rebels.
   
African leaders called on the rebels on Saturday to abandon their aim of toppling the government and leave the city of Goma they captured last week.

Meanwhile the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) government said on Tuesday that demands made by M23 rebels for pulling out of the eastern city of Goma were a "farce".
   
"It's a farce, that's the word. There's been a document adopted by the region. If each day they're going to come back with new demands it becomes ridiculous. We're no longer in the realms of seriousness," DRC spokesman Lambert Mende told Reuters from Kinshasa.
   
M23 rebels have demanded DRC's President Joseph Kabila hold national talks, release political prisoners and disband the electoral commission before they withdraw from Goma.

 
REUTERS