OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Kinshasa | Monday
ANGOLA, Namibia and Zimbabwe have called for new peace efforts to end conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo following the slaying of its president Laurent Kabila in what an advisor says was “a premeditated attack”.
Presidents Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe said they were “convinced that dialogue and consultation present the most effective way to achieve durable peace in the DRC. Their countries all have troops fighting alongside DRC government forces in the two-and-a-half year conflict against rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda.
Emile Mota, economic advisor to the president, said he believed the shooting of Kabila by one of his own bodyguards last week had been planned for a long time. Kabila was shot on Tuesday in the presidential palace in Kinshasa by a member of his presidential guard, then flown to Harare where the government said he died on Thursday.
Mota said the bodyguard had been recruited by Kabila in the bush in 1996, and had been among the former rebel leader’s forces that marched into Kinshasa in May 1997.
A group of DRC soldiers close to one of Kabila’s former allies who disappeared in 1997 has claimed claimed responsibility for the killing.
The statement said the group had been formed under the orders of General Ngandu Kisase, who fought alongside Kabila in the war that ousted the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko from the then Zaire in 1997. Kisase disappeared later that year in circumstances that were never clarified.
A Belgian newspaper has named Kabila’s assassin as Kasereka Rachidi from the DRC’s eastern North Kivu Province, a rebel stronghold. – AFP