THE United States has ordered two diplomats from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) expelled from the country in retaliation for the expulsion last week by Kinshasa of two US foreign service officers, a senior State Department official said. ”We have notified the DRC embassy that two Congolese diplomats have been declared persona non grata,” an official said. ”They have 48 hours to leave the country.” Earlier, the State Department said Washington was considering ”appropriate and commensurate” responses to the expulsion from the DRC of public affairs officer Denise Burgess and political officer Roger Moran. He said the pair had returned to the United States, and reiterated Washington’s objections to their expulsions, which Kinshasa said was the result of inappropriate comments made to civil society leaders at a diplomatic function. The Congolese pro-government newspaper L’Avenir reported on Friday that Burgess was a CIA contact in Kinshasa and had called on Congolese citizens attending a private dinner ”to end the misery of the DR Congolese people by any means, even through a bloody revolution.” – Reuters