The M23 rebel group fighting to control eastern Congo wants sanctions against its members lifted before it joins talks that were scheduled to begin today.

The European Union announced sanctions over five senior leaders of the Rwanda-backed militia on Monday for the conflict that’s seen the two biggest cities in the region fall to the rebel group, forcing about a million people to flee their homes. It also penalised three senior Rwandan military officials, the head of the nation’s mining and energy regulator, and a gold refinery it said was exploiting the violence to extract natural resources from Congo.

“We should lift those sanctions straight away,” M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma said a day after the group pulled out of planned negotiations with the Congo government in Angola. “We are giving sanctions to a movement that is liberating the population and in areas we have liberated there is peace.”

He denied M23 is working with Rwanda and said the international community was creating a situation that “blocks dialogue.”

The group’s leaders and Rwandan officials are already under a separate set of sanctions by the US, which has also condemned the insurgency that many fear is preparing to permanently control a region that’s home to minerals used in mobile phones, including tin, tungsten and tantalum.

BACK TO THE TABLE

Congo “will wait to see what the mediation team has to say once the absence of the others is confirmed,” government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya said Tuesday.

M23 will eventually be obliged to rejoin negotiations, according to Reagan Miviri, a senior researcher for Ebuteli, a Congolese research institute.

“The M23 need these negotiations because they want for their occupation of the zones they have taken to be made possible. And to do that they need an arrangement,” he said, adding that the announcement to pull out of talks “was just out of anger, but in the long term they will have to go back to the table.”

The reopening of the financial sector in Goma and Bukavu, the two cities it now occupies, will also be top of mind for the group. For almost two months citizens have been unable to access savings or salaries as banks have remained shut since the invasion of Goma earlier in the year.

“If people are not happy when it comes to the financial sector they will turn against the M23,” Miviri said.