Félix Tshisekedi landed at 4 de Fevereiro International Airport, where he "received welcome greetings" from Téte António, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accessed by VerAngola, "the reception committee included the deputy governor of the province of Luanda for the Political Sector, Manuel António Gonçalves, minister-counselor Yema da Silva, Chief of the Department of the Africa and Middle East Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and senior officials of the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Angola".
The visit lasted a few hours, with the DRC president's return to Kinshasa scheduled for the same day, after meeting his Angolan counterpart, João Lourenço, at the Presidential Palace of Cidade Alta.
After the meeting between the presidents of Angola and the DRC, the Minister of State and Head of the Security House of the President of the Republic, Francisco Furtado, informed that Angola is waiting for conditions to send troops to the DRC.
"The sending of an Angolan military contingent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, on a peacekeeping mission, will only happen when the conditions for cantonment in this country are created", reads a statement from CIPRA, which VerAngola had access to.
According to Francisco Furtado, quoted in the note, a commission is visiting the planned areas of cantonment in order to confirm the existence of conditions in that country.
"Today there is a delegation from the Ad Hoc Mechanism, also made up of officers from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, visiting the planned areas to confirm the existence of conditions. And we think that, at the beginning of next week, we will have the report of this mechanism, in order to eventually be able to predict an exact date for the beginning of the engagement of our contingent in the mission in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo", he said, quoted in the statement.
The minister also made it known that the two presidents, in the meeting that took place in the capital, "agreed to create conditions to allow the movement of the military contingent".
He also reiterated that they cannot project the contingent "until conditions are guaranteed". "We cannot deploy our contingent while there are no guaranteed conditions for hosting the M23 military in the cantonment areas", he indicated.
The minister said that it was "a concern of the government of the DRC to create the necessary conditions", but he stated that "the involvement of all parties, including the government of Rwanda and the Mechanism for International Verification and Monitoring of the Peace Agreement, is important", adds the note.
