South African President Thabo Mbeki will meet three leaders from the Great Lakes regions next week, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

"The president is meeting presidents Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of Congo), Paul Kagame (Rwanda) and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) next week Wednesday in Cape Town," Bheki Khumalo said.

Details of the summit will be announced later this week, he said.

"It is a routine meeting, but the detail of it is not yet known," Khumalo said.

The four state leaders are expected to discuss troop withdrawals from the DRC, a South African official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP.

The European Network for the Congo, which groups about 30 charities and non-governmental organisations, and Christian Concertation for Central Africa said last week that thousands of Rwandan troops, which backed rebels fighting to topple Kabila, returned to the DRC last month, a charge Kigali denied point-blank.

There is also distrust between Rwanda and its northern neighbour Uganda, which backed another rebel movement during the war. The two countries have been said by some regional analysts to be pursuing a proxy war across their DRC borders.

Some 2,000 Ugandan troops still deployed in northeastern DRC at the request of the United Nations to help quell a regional conflict are now due to leave by April 24.

Parties involved in peace talks in the DRC on Tuesday agreed to set up a transitional government to lead to the first democratic elections there in 40 years.

Some 360 delegates from the DRC government, rebel groups and the political opposition will sign the approved documents to constitute the final act of the DRC peace process Wednesday at the closing ceremony of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue in Sun City, in northwestern South Africa.

The signing will be televised to viewers in the DRC, where the four-and-a-half year war has claimed some 2.5 million lives, either directly through fighting or indirectly through famine and illness, according to UN estimates - Sapa-AFP