The meeting was scheduled for this Wednesday, at the initiative of Kenya, to try to resolve the crisis in eastern DR Congo, a country neighboring Angola.
"The President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Félix Tshisekedi, will not participate in the virtual summit of the heads of state of the East African Community (EAC)", officially 'for agenda reasons', according to the Congolese news agency.
In recent days, there has been intense fighting in Goma, the main city in eastern DR Congo, largely at the hands of the anti-government armed group M23 and Rwandan troops, who seized the airport on Tuesday, less than two days after entering the city.
More than 100 dead and around 1000 injured have been taken to hospitals in Goma in the last three days of fighting, according to a count by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency compiled on Tuesday from hospital reports.
The fighting has displaced more than 500,000 people since the beginning of January, according to the Congolese government.
On Tuesday, in Kinshasa, protesters attacked several embassies, including that of Rwanda, which the Congolese authorities accused of having "declared war" on them in the east of the country. The diplomatic missions of Kenya, France, Belgium and the United States, countries criticised for their inaction in this crisis, were also targeted.
The announcement two days ago by M23 that it would take Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, in the east of the DR Congo and close to the border with Rwanda, paves the way for an escalation of the conflict, with the EAC trying to apply the recipe that Angola, mandated by the African Union and the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) to mediate political, diplomatic and security tensions in the region, has failed to implement.
