Mobutu Picks New Prime Minister to End Zaire Crisis

Opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi became prime minister in a new crisis government Monday in the wake of an orgy of army-led looting that killed at least 117 people.

But his appointment left open the question of how power would be shared between authoritarian President Mobutu Sese Seko and an opposition that has demanded the end of his 26-year rule.

“I am the prime minister of consensus,” Tshisekedi, 58, told reporters after he emerged from five hours of haggling between Mobutu and his opponents.

Mobutu, 60, signed a decree making Tshisekedi prime minister, effective immediately.

Members of the “consensus government” are to be named within 48 hours, Tshisekedi said.

He added that the new government would be sworn in before Zaire’s national conference, a 3,000-member multi-party body that is supposed to chart the road to democracy but has been in chaos since it opened in August.

State television said the national conference session scheduled for today had been postponed until Wednesday, apparently because Tshisekedi needed 48 hours to form his government.

Tshisekedi, a lawyer from the Baluba tribe of central Zaire, was the architect of Zaire’s transformation into a one-party state in 1967, two years after Mobutu took power in a military coup. He served Mobutu as a minister before breaking with him in 1980.