The three delegations met in a Bujumbura hotel with UN mediator Amos Namanga Ngongi.

Earlier the main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), declared a unilateral truce in Nord-Kivu, after seizing two key towns in the eastern region from the rival RCD-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML), allied to the Kinshasa government.

"The RCD has declared a unilateral ceasefire on the front line in north Kivu, which includes the two towns of Kanyabayonga and Alimbongo," RCD spokesman Crispin Kabasele Tshimanga told AFP by phone from the rebels' headquarters in Goma.

The RCD, which has long been backed by Rwanda, claimed last week that it captured Alimbongo, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Goma, and Kanyabayonga from the breakaway RCD-ML.

Days after the announced capture, a local bishop told AFP that the Rwandan army had attacked targets in both towns and others in the north of the two Kivu provinces.

"The decision to declare a ceasefire was taken this morning (Wednesday) by the leaders of the RCD to give every chance to the on-going peace process," Tshimanga said.

But the head of the rival RCD-ML said after the ceasefire announcement that the larger rebel group had attacked the town of Ndoluma, north of Alimbongo, in the early hours of Wednesday.

The RCD, the largest rebel movement in DRC in terms of both manpower and military might, was backed by neighbouring Rwanda in a bid, launched in 1998, to oust the government of then president Laurent Kabila.

The rebels said they are unwilling to withdraw from their "defensive positions" unless the Congolese armed forces quit eastern areas in accordance with the 2000 Harare accords.

The rebellion boiled over into all-out war which drew in a dozen African nations at its height and killed some 2.5 million people, either directly in combat or indirectly through disease and hunger.

DRC's war officially ended in April this year, but fighting has continued in several parts of the country notably in the northeastern Ituri region and in the Kivu provinces.

The head of a multinational force deployed in the strife-torn northeastern DRC town of Bunia warned that his troops would deal with anyone blocking efforts to restore security there.

Bunia, where hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and where abductions and rape continue on a nightly basis, is currently under the control of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), a politico-military group with ties to Rwanda and whose leadership is dominated by the ethnic Hema minority.

Opposed factions drawn from the Lendu majority -- the Hema's longtime foes -- are also deployed close to the town and have tried on several occasions to retake it, with the consequent loss of many lives.

WAR.WIRE