Word: kabila
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Although he spent several hours talking to Mandela, it is still not certain that Kabila has accepted the South African's proposal: a 10-point plan that would put the rebel leader at the head of a coalition of opposition groups and guarantee elections within a year. What Mandela and the U.N. and U.S. negotiators had in mind was for Kabila to accept power from parliament speaker Laurent Monsengwo, Archbishop of Kisangani, who was installed in office for that purpose...
...first hours of power, Kabila ignored Monsengwo and his government. Though under pressure from many quarters, including his African backers, to establish a broad-based regime, Kabila has declared that the only legal political party is his own Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo...
...Kabila's ascension to the leadership of Zaire, a nation of 45 million people the size of Western Europe and rich in diamonds, gold, cobalt and copper, came with stunning speed. Mobutu's ouster was the culmination of a seven-month military campaign that began as an uprising among Tutsi tribesmen in southeastern Zaire after they were ordered expelled from the country. With backing from the anti-Mobutu governments of Uganda, Rwanda and Angola, Kabila took control of and expanded the rebel movement, sweeping east to west across the vast Central African nation almost without opposition until he was camped...
...stiffest resistance Kabila confronted came not from the Zairian army but from the Angolan rebel group UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, a cold war ally of the U.S.'s and great friend of Mobutu's. One of the hardest-fought battles of the civil war was two weeks ago in the southern town of Kenge between Kabila's troops and UNITA rebels, who have long depended on Zaire as a pipeline for weapons and other supplies. UNITA fighters were also among the last defenders of Kinshasa's international airport. But by Friday they too bowed to the inevitable and headed...
Before he began his remarkable military campaign, Kabila had been dismissed as what a Clinton Administration official called a "bar revolutionary," who spent most of his time drinking in taverns far from the front or negotiating shady gold and diamond deals. A former Marxist who once held a group of Americans hostage, Kabila is still considered ideologically suspect in Washington. While he is reported to have restored law and order and welcomed foreign investment to the areas he has conquered, he has also begun "social re-education" programs. And so far, U.S. analysts say, he has shown a worrisome antipathy...