U.S. Shuts Embassy in Congo; Regime May Be Near Collapse

NAIROBI, Kenya —  As the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Congo was shut and the last 20 American diplomatic personnel were evacuated from the city, Congolese government officials vowed Saturday to launch a counterattack against rebels advancing on Kinshasa.

But outside observers said that President Laurent Kabila’s government was on the verge of collapse. The military command structure in Kinshasa has weakened; on Thursday, Kabila fired his army chief; rebels have taken control of several key cities and a strategic naval base on the Atlantic coastline; and a political initiative by regional leaders to end the war seemed destined to fail.

“His masters say that he must go, so he must go,” said Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, a Congolese and professor emeritus of African studies at Washington’s Howard University, referring to the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda, who helped propel Kabila to power in May 1997 and who many observers believe are now supporting the drive to topple him. Both countries deny the claim.

“The rebellion is moving rapidly,” said Salih Booker, chief Africa specialist at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

One Western diplomat formerly based in Congo forecast that before long, there will be “fighting in the streets of Kinshasa.”

The remaining American diplomatic personnel in the capital were transported by a chartered plane to the safety of nearby Cameroon, almost two weeks after the State Department ordered nonemergency workers and family members of embassy personnel to leave.

Also Saturday, France tried to negotiate with Congolese authorities to ferry foreign nationals in Kinshasa across the Congo River to neighboring Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo.

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As tensions escalated in the city of 6 million, residents rushed to stock up on foodstuffs and bottled water while soldiers stepped up their patrols of the streets and markets, searching cars for weapons and detaining suspected rebel collaborators, witnesses said.

Foreign journalists have been harassed and accused of biased anti-Kabila reporting. Some news photographers have had their film confiscated, correspondents on the scene confirmed.

Meanwhile, a witch hunt has ensued against Congo’s ethnic Tutsis. It was disgruntled soldiers from this minority group in the country’s east who ignited the rebellion earlier this month, accusing Kabila of corruption, mismanagement, nepotism and failure to determine a concrete political program for this Central African nation of 46 million.

The foreign ministers of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and Tanzania, under a mandate reached at an Aug. 8 summit attended by Kabila in the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls, arrived in Kinshasa on Saturday to try to find a peaceful end to the war and to investigate charges that Rwanda and Uganda have invaded Congo, formerly called Zaire.

It was unclear, however, whether Kabila was still in the capital, since he had not been seen in public since Wednesday.

Government officials denied claims that the president had fled and left the city’s residents to face a potentially prolonged siege. “Kabila is still in charge,” said one government source in a telephone interview from Kinshasa. “Everything is under control.”

But analysts said the former rebel leader turned president, who was helped by renegade soldiers to oust former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, has backed himself into a corner and is short on friends.

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Kabila has made enemies within the international community over his lack of respect for human rights and failure to promote democracy. His blockage of a U.N. probe into whether troops of his former rebel army massacred Rwandan refugees also has isolated him.

Hatred against Tutsis has won Kabila backing among a large segment of Kinshasa’s citizens; thousands of young men and women are reported to have volunteered to fight off the rebels. But analysts pointed out the difficulty of gauging the mood and degree of support for the president in every village and hamlet across Congo.

“Kabila does not have a real [support] base,” Nzongola-Ntalaja said. “He was simply found by the Rwandans and Ugandans and imposed. There are a lot of things we don’t know, what kind of Kabila made to [them]. It’s clear, however, that these countries were displeased with his rule.”

Last month, Kabila ordered all Rwandan soldiers to leave Congo and began to remove Tutsis from his government’s upper ranks.

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Analysts have little doubt that the Congolese rebels are being aided by more powerful sources. Before being evacuated earlier this month, foreign aid workers in eastern Congo reported seeing loads of soldiers crossing the border from Rwanda.

Nzongola-Ntalaja noted that even before the hostilities, Uganda had established a military base in eastern Congo--on Uganda’s western border--in an attempt to counter insurgents launching attacks against Uganda from there. Some observers believe that this base is being used as a launching pad for opponents of Kabila--a charge Uganda denies.

Suspicions of foreign involvement in Congo’s war also have been fueled by the presence of masses of renegade soldiers in Kitona--near the Atlantic coast and southwest of Kinshasa.

The troops reportedly were airlifted there, and “the rebels simply do not have the capability to do that,” Nzongola-Ntalaja said.

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* KENYANS BURIED: Funerals are held for victims of Nairobi terrorist bombing. A4