Word: laurents
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KINSHASA, Zaire: The government of the newly named Democratic Republic of Congo is moving quickly to consolidate power two days after Laurent Kabila's ragtag rebel soldiers marched victoriously into the capital, reports TIME's Peter Graff from Kinshasa. "Kabila's representatives met Monday with the chairmen of the major state-run enterprises and the heads of the national bank," says Graff, "and they did it very publicly." The moves have helped to stabilize the national currency, which soared from 170,000 zaire to the dollar on Friday to 50,000 to the dollar Monday. Kabila, who has assumed...
KINSHASA, Zaire: Following a Thursday evening meeting in which his top generals said they could no longer protect him or Kinshasa from Laurent Kabila's advancing rebel army, President Mobutu Sese Seko quietly gave up power and fled the capital Friday morning. After 32 years as the head of a kleptocracy that looted the vast natural wealth of a country the size of Western Europe, Mobutu returned to his palatial home at Gbadolite in northern Zaire. He reportedly will fly within the next few days to Morocco. Concluding that the government's ragged army will not be able to hold...
...endgame in Zaire arrived sooner than anyone expected. President Mobutu Sese Seko, the country's corrupt "Supreme Guide" for 32 years, finally ran out of moves. When he grudgingly flew off last Friday for a possible meeting with rebel leader Laurent Desire Kabila, Mobutu could choose only his manner of exit: to resign, as his neighbors and former friends were urging, or be thrown out at gunpoint, as Kabila's advancing troops intended to do in short order. Since last October the rebels of Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces have surged across two-thirds of the vast nation, while...
...cross-border incursion, joining Zairean Tutsi rebels to rout murderous Hutu militias that had fled across the frontier with the civilian refugees. When Mobutu's army vanished in the face of this onslaught, a full-scale Zairean rebellion suddenly seemed possible. Museveni told his Rwandan friend to tap Laurent Kabila as the leader of a broader movement, and today Kabila, with key help from Kagame, is ready to take Zaire...
...envoy) Bill Richardson's 'soft landing' will be much easier to negotiate," says Graff. "The remnants of the Mobutuist military would agree to lay down their arms and the rebels would enter the capital in peace." As fighting continues near Kenge, east of the capital, Graff says rebel leader Laurent Kabila himself is perhaps a week away from arriving in Kinshasa. While Mobutu may attempt to save face by leaving a transitional government in his wake, it is doubtful Kabila would tolerate any regime that he does not head...