Kabila8217;s Congo gets US recognition

WASHINGTON, MAY 20: The United States on Monday gave de facto recognition for the new government in Zaire and the new name for the country....

WASHINGTON, MAY 20: The United States on Monday gave de facto recognition for the new government in Zaire and the new name for the country. 8220;We had a relation with Zaire, we will now have a relation with the Democratic Republic of Congo,8221; said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns.

Earlier White House spokesman David Johnson said, 8220;Now that Kabila and his forces exercise substantial control over Zaire, we of course will be working with them.8221;

This move comes depite US reservations about the obscure gold smuggler, who nine months ago was paying off local army officers and leading a tiny, rebel enclave of a few hundred followers near lake Tanganyika.

Today, he claims the Presidency of Zaire, having chased from Kinshasa former President Mobutu Sese Seko, who, with Western backing, ruled and looted sub-saharan Africa8217;s second largest nation with an iron hand and almost limitless greed for 32 years.

With Mobutu out of the Zairean capital at last, UN officials and independent analysts here are focusing for the first time on Laurent-Desire Kabila, the 56-year-old, Katangan-born President of the triumphant, eight-month-old Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire adfl. And they8217;re not yet certain that they like what they see.

8220;He8217;s a big question mark,8221; says Pauline Baker, former staff director of the US Senate8217;s Africa subcommittee. Like many others here, she worries that Kabila is listening more closely to his more authoritarian backers in Uganda and Angola than to South African President Nelson Mandela whose latest efforts to broker a transition between Mobutu and the rebels were rejected by Kabila.

8220;We hope that he will be a responsible leader who believes in what the Zairean people deserve, and that is economic reform and reconstruction and political freedom,8221; according to Burns who called on Friday for Kabila to 8220;prepare for elections so that at some point in the future, the Zairean people can decide things for themselves.8221; Burns, who said Washington will provide funding for such elections to help move Kabila in that direction, noted that the rebel leader 8220;has held a variety of political and ideological positions throughout his long career.8221;

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Indeed Kabila first came to public notice during the 1964-65 insurrection in Stanleyville 8211; now Kisangani 8211; where he worked as a key political organiser on behalf of leftist forces led by Antoine Gizenga and eventually alongside Ernesto Che8217; Guevara, who complained in his diaries that Kabila8217;s tastes for women and alcohol did little to advance the revolutionary cause in Central Africa.

Now after years of cobbling together groups Kabila has been described as, 8217;Above all, an opportunist, and quite an adroit one,8221; says an intelligence official, who asked not to be identified.

8220;He8217;ll do what he has to do to get what he wants. The problem is that we8217;re not sure what he wants, beyond getting rid of Mobutu and taking power in his place,8221; the official said. This would call for placing order and control before elections or opposition parties.