Word: sese
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...weeks of denial for Africa's most durable dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, finally came to an end on Thursday, when his three top generals asked for an urgent meeting. The trio was uncharacteristically blunt. They told Mobutu they could no longer protect him or the capital of Kinshasa from the approaching rebel army of Laurent Desire Kabila, and that if Mobutu valued his life he should flee. A commander had driven to the front east of Kinshasa that morning and concluded that government soldiers would not fight to save Mobutu's crumbling regime...
...then as a Belgian colony, Congo won its independence in 1960. But within months its first elected Prime Minister had been killed by Belgium- and U.S.-backed opponents because of his growing ties to the Soviet Union, an assassination that eventually opened the way for army general Mobutu Sese Seko to grab power. A U.S. favorite during the cold war, Mobutu presided over one of the most corrupt regimes in African history, siphoning off billions from state-owned companies and allowing most of the country to languish. In 1996 neighboring Rwanda and Uganda jointly invaded Congo to eliminate the Hutu...
...time to time. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, shod in Adidas, alighted from his silver sedan to jog in Central Park. He also stopped at Cohen's Fashion Optical to buy, using a credit card, $3,000 worth of eyeglasses for himself and his family. Zaďrian President Mobutu Sese Seko rented two Amtrak club cars loaded with caviar and champagne to take his entourage of 50 people to Washington and back (cost: $9,800). Outside the U.N., West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to be snatched from the path of an onrushing New York City police car bringing...
...determined than he is. Still, Saddam could have saved his regime by coming completely clean on his weapons-of-mass-destruction program. He could have saved himself by giving up political power. Other modern strongmen staring at a similar fate, from the Shah of Iran to Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko, have done it, and Saddam was suspected of stashing away enough secret wealth to make it easy. But he did not, and the reasons lie very much in his own biography...
...wouldn’t want to put a lot of stake in the distinction between the two sides. Just look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the current government was a start-up rebel group not five years ago, fighting the recognized but despicable government of Mobutu Sese Seko. Under the definition of the Kimberly Process, Mobutu’s diamonds are fair game, but the rebel diamonds would have been illegal. It’s unfortunate that the Kimberly Process taints its moral position with a trivial, political distinction...