Senior South African government officials, as well as their Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) counterparts and two main warring groups are meeting in Pretoria this weekend for talks aimed at paving the way for a power-sharing transitional government in the war-torn DRC.

The two warring factions are Adolphe Onusumba's Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) and Jean-Pierre Bemba's Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC).

Government sources said the talks would seek to allow DRC President Joseph Kabila to remain president of a transitional government, with four vice-presidencies created for government, the RCD, MLC and representatives of the internal unarmed political parties and civil society.

Speaking to BuaNews this morning Thembi Majola of the Presidential Support Unit, said the weekend meeting was a follow up to the DRC peace talks held at Sun City in North West earlier this year.

The Sun City talks, facilitated by President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Jacob Zuma, saw the DRC government and the MLC reaching a peace agreement, while the RCD did not agree.

The RCD purportedly did not agree to the peace deal because its military allies, the Rwandan government, were not satisfied its security concerns had been met.

Subsequent talks were held in Pretoria on 30 July, during which Rwanda agreed to withdraw its forces from the DRC in 90 days if the DRC disarmed and neutralised the Hutu rebels who fled to the DRC after the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

"This meeting is a DRC peace political process that follows developments made during the Sun City talks and comes after the successful Third Party Verification Mechanism (TPVM) and the United Nations Organization Mission in the Congo (MONUC) were able to monitor the withdrawal of the Rwandan armed forces from the DRC," she said.

In a statement, the Presidency said the withdrawal process of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) forces that started on 17 September was completed on 5 October when the last 1 152 troops crossed the eastern DRC border post of Goma into Rwanda.

The TPVM monitored the withdrawal of 20 593 troops in total.

This number was 2 807, short of the total figure of 23 400 troops in the DRC as declared by the RPA Military Command.