Word: sirred
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...world - the U. S., France, Germany and the former colonial power Belgium - to ask for help in rebuilding his shattered country and to promise to abide by a peace deal to end the 33-month war there. He fired the ministers he inherited from his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, and promises to install a cabinet that "will work for Congo." Says a senior Western diplomat in the capital, Kinshasa, a city of moldering colonial grandeur and mid-1970s mineral boom excess: "For a guy his age he's remarkably savvy. The big question...
...would be hard to do worse than his father did. When the one-time Marxist Laurent-Désiré - backed by Rwanda and Uganda - ousted the venal Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, he was greeted with cheers and optimism. After three decades of kleptocratic dictatorship, it seemed that Congo could finally begin again. But the senior Kabila's promise of national reconstruction didn't get much further than slogans and billboards. Within a year the country was back at war, and the smiling giant had cracked down on political opponents and postponed promised elections. So when a bodyguard shot...
...telling break from tradition is his refusal to have billboards of his portrait erected. Both Mobutu and Laurent-Désiré Kabila fueled a cult of personality through posters, songs and, in Mobutu's case, a nightly pre-news video showing him floating Godlike in the clouds. "I know how I look, so I don't need to have a poster to realize that I look like Joseph," he says. "Has it really got any meaning? Times have changed. The expectations of the people of the Congo are not to see Joseph on posters or to listen to songs...
...peace deal signed 20 months ago by the main protagonists - and requiring a cease-fire and the deployment of U. N. observers - has begun to take hold; most analysts agree that Laurent-Désiré was the main obstacle to peace. Rwanda and Uganda have pulled back troops; Zimbabwe and Angola are beginning to do the same. By last week, the U.N. had deployed 828 observers and troops and, says Squadron Leader Paul Beard of Britain, "there's a bit of momentum building up that is getting difficult to resist...
...Prince Charles called him "one of the great life enhancers of our age," perhaps the best epitaph for SIR HARRY SECOMBE, an ebullient comedian, acclaimed tenor, film actor, charity worker, author, and longtime TV and radio personality. These were the extensions of an exuberant character, whose spontaneous wit never relied on malice to entertain. For those who grew up in Britain in the '50s, Secombe is best remembered as Neddy Seagoon of radio's long-running Goon Show. With Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Michael Bentine, Secombe gave us our first taste of alternative comedy. In those ordered, respectable times...