More than 400,000 North Kivu residents have been forced to flee clashes over the last year between soldiers, Nkunda's insurgents, local Mai Mai militia and Rwandan rebels, despite the end of Congo's broader 1998-2003 war.

Kabila convened the conference after the disastrous failure of an army offensive against ethnic Tutsi fighters loyal to Nkunda last month that worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis.

The president had been expected to attend Sunday's opening, but pulled out at the last minute.

"This is the first time in the history of our country that the daughters and sons of these two provinces ... come together with the sole and unique objective of peace, security, development," Interior Minister Denis Kalume, Kabila's representative at the talks, said at the opening ceremony.

Nkunda, whose National Congress for the Defence of the People has around 4,000 well-trained Tutsi fighters, will not attend the 10-day conference either and has instead sent a mixed military and civilian delegation.

Political representatives from the 'Pareco' Mai Mai militia, created to combat Nkunda's rebellion, will also attend.

The rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), Nkunda's traditional Hutu enemies, were not invited. The FDLR is composed in part of Rwandan ex-soldiers and Interahamwe militia who fled to eastern Congo after carrying out the 1994 genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Nkunda launched his insurgency in 2004 saying he would protect his fellow Tutsis against FDLR attacks. Fighting resumed in late August after Nkunda abandoned a Rwandan-brokered peace accord and pulled his fighters out of the army.

Congo's opposition has accused Kabila of capitulating to the country's last major armed group by holding the talks.

"The state must defend its people," Artur Z'ahidi Ngoma, a vice president in a 2004-2006 transitional government, told Reuters. "If this government is incapable of assuming its constitutional responsibilities, then it should simply resign."

The talks have received the full backing of Congo's U.N. peacekeeping mission and foreign diplomatic missions, some of which have helped fund the summit.

"The logistics of it happening is the first hurdle ... Until it actually starts, we have no idea if it's going to have any kind of positive outcome. But we support the effort," a Western diplomat, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

One conference organiser, Vital Kamerhe, president of Congo's lower house of parliament, said he believed between 850 and 1,000 delegates would attend the talks in the North Kivu capital Goma -- well beyond the initial 200 expected.