By Joe Bavier KINSHASA, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Congo's army has opened talks with a renegade general in the violence-plagued east aimed at defusing tensions after historic post-war elections this year, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Representatives from Congo's armed forces met with General Laurent Nkunda's aides on Monday under U.N. supervision and reached a deal to guarantee the free movement of civilians in the region, the peacekeeping mission said in a statement. Around 80,000 people have been displaced by fighting between Nkunda loyalists and the Congolese army in the past weeks, after the general's forces attacked the town of Sake in late November. Both sides promised to pull fighters back from advanced positions. A follow-up meeting is due to take place this week to treat the specifics of the withdrawal. "It is still a very unstable situation due simply to the presence of troops from both sides," Lt. Col. Didier Rancher, military spokesman for the U.N. mission in Congo, told Reuters. "This first step is important because the pressure of these troops on the ground is key. If they withdraw, we'll see an easing of tensions." The talks came after President Joseph Kabila was sworn in as Democratic Republic of Congo's first freely elected leader in more than four decades on Dec. 6, following U.N.-backed elections intended to draw a line under years of civil war. The signing of a 2003 peace accord officially ended six years of civil war that left an estimated 4 million Congolese dead, mainly from starvation and disease. But the vast central African country's eastern provinces have continued to see sporadic fighting between local armed militias. The Congolese army has been massing soldiers in North Kivu since late November when Nkunda's forces seized Sake, about 30 kilometres west of the provincial capital Goma. U.N. forces used helicopter gunships, heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to support the Congolese army in several days of fighting against the rebels, eventually driving them out of Sake and killing at least 150 of them. The U.N.'s spokesman in Congo, Kemal Saiki, said Wednesday the mission was encouraged by the opening of dialogue as an alternative to a military solution. "The problem in the east is essentially a political problem," he told journalists. "And there can be no other solution than a political solution." Nkunda, a former Congolese army general, led two brigades in a 2004 mutiny against Kabila, who had inherited the presidency when his father was assassinated in 2001. Nkunda claimed he was acting to protect fellow members of Congo's Tutsi minority. In recent days, Kabila has come under pressure from U.N. officials and diplomatic heavyweight South Africa to pursue a political solution to the problem. Nkunda, who has an estimated 2,000 well-organised fighters at his command, is sought under an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes committed during his forces' subsequent week-long occupation of the eastern city of Bukavu. The U.N.'s peacekeeping mission in Congo is the world's largest with some 17,600 peacekeepers on the ground.
