LUANDA - Talks due Sunday between the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to end conflict in the eastern DRC were called off after negotiations deadlocked, officials said. Since 2021 a Rwanda-backed rebel militia has seized swathes of the eastern DRC, displacing thousands and triggering a humanitarian crisis. There had been high hopes that the summit hosted by Angola’s President Joao Lourenco -- the African Union mediator to end the conflict -- would end with a deal to end the conflict. But around midday Sunday the head of the Angolan presidency’s media office said it would not go ahead. “Contrary to what we expected, the summit will no longer be held today,” media officer Mario Jorge told journalists. Lourenco was meeting with DRC leader Felix Tshisekedi and without Rwandan President Paul Kagame, he said. The Congolese presidency said that negotiations had hit deadlock over a Rwandan demand that the DRC hold direct dialogue with the Kigali-backed and largely ethnic Tutsi M23 rebels who have since 2021 seized swathes of the eastern DRC. “There is a stalemate because the Rwandans have set as a precondition for the signing of an agreement that the DRC hold a direct dialogue with the M23,” Giscard Kusema, the Congolese presidency spokesman present in Luanda, told AFP.