Congo Updates 9/14/97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source: congo-news@thor.cmp.ilstu.edu Sat Sep 13 15:03:42 1997 Mobutu, Shunned by Old Allies, Buried 12.04 p.m. EDT (1604 GMT) September 13, 1997 RABAT, Morocco -- Ousted Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko was buried Saturday in the Moroccan capital Rabat in a family ceremony, shunned by those who had courted him for much of his three decades in power. Mobutu, 66, died last Sunday in Mohamed V military hospital after losing a long battle with prostate cancer and his country to a rebellion. Amid tight security his body was taken from the family villa in Rabat's residential area of Souissi in a white ambulance, leaving the house at 10:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m.) Saturday. A cortege of a dozen vehicles, including two vans carrying riot police, followed it slowly on the 15-minute drive to the Christian cemetery on the Rabat-Casablanca road. There was no sign of any diplomatic or other representation from Mobutu's former allies, such as France. A police source said a senior diplomat from the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, attended the funeral. Inside the cemetery, with its ranks of simple white crosses and elaborate burial chambers, workmen had spent several days preparing a grave. The former head of state was a Catholic, but there was no sign of any religious ceremony at the cathedral in the heart of the capital, despite a heavy police presence and barriers erected. A police source said a priest from Congo officiated at the burial, which was attended by Mobutu's family, including his wife Bobi Ladawa, sons Nzanga and Kongolo, and other relatives. The source said a senior Moroccan army officer, who was among paratroopers sent by Rabat to help Mobutu fight a secessionist uprising in Shaba in 1977 and who become a friend of Mobutu, was at the funeral. But there was no official Moroccan representation, the source said. King Hassan gave the dictator shelter in May on humanitarian grounds. Mobutu's immediate family, believed to have been in a blue Mercedes in the convoy behind the ambulance, opposed any news coverage of Mobutu's death and burial. After just over an hour, the cars left the cemetery, which was then firmly shut. There has been no comment from the Moroccan government, and the official news agency MAP carried just a brief announcement of Mobutu's death last Sunday. Abroad, official indifference greeted the death of a man courted by East and West in the days of the Cold War and who used foreign support to maintain his grip on power. Former Zaire's new strongman Laurent Kabila brushed off the death, saying it was no more worthy of comment that that of any other citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But South African President Nelson Mandela, another African statesman who has been treated for prostate problems, said Mobutu had suffered incredibly at the end, commenting: "His former friends did not want to assist him. Those who helped him for 30 years and benefited from their association with him, during his last days on earth did not want to know him.'' Ethnic Fighting Spreads in East of Congo 11.08 a.m. EDT (1508 GMT) September 12, 1997 UVIRA, Democratic Republic of the Congo -- Armed conflict in the east of Laurent Kabila's Congo is on the rise with members of a local tribe constantly attacking Kabila's Rwandan Tutsi allies, aid workers say. Aid workers say the semi-derelict town of Fizi, south of Uvira, is a scene of intermittent clashes between the Babembe, former comrade-in-arms of Kabila, and the Rwandan army. Sources in Uvira, a port town on Lake Tanganyika bordering Burundi, say the Babembe resent the dominance of Tutsi soldiers active in Congo. To further its aims they have enlisted the support of armed Hutu rebels from Burundi and soldiers from the former Rwandan and Zairean government armies. "Fizi is a growing security problem -- it's basically Congolese versus Rwandese, Babembe versus Banyamulenge,'' an aid worker in Uvira told Reuters. Banyamulenge have been in Congo for the past 200 years but for many Congolese they remain Tutsis from Rwanda and are treated as foreigners. "All key security and administrative positions (in East Congo) are occupied by the Rwandese, especially anything military,'' the aid worker said, adding this was a source of considerable friction with the Babembe who spurned participation in Kabila's rebel alliance. Kabila, who took power in May with Rwandan help after a campaign to oust late President Mobutu Sese Seko, has formed a 32-strong committee to investigate renewed ethnic violence in the east of the former Zaire. Kabila has always used Babembe in his long struggle against Mobutu but they refused to help him when he accepted and incorporated Banyamulenge and members of the Rwandan army into his fighting force. A second U.N. official said Rwanda had last week withdrawn all its soldiers from Fizi but the reasons were unclear. He said there were three possibilities. One involved repeated but unconfirmed claims that a Rwandan commander and his troops had escaped with the monthly salaries for the Congolese soldiers and had looted Congolese military stores. A second reason was that Rwandan troops were needed to reinforce a counter-insurgency campaign in North Kivu, which extremist Hutu soldiers and Interahamwe militia have been using as a springboard for attacks into western Rwanda. The pullout could also be an attempt to calm Fizi at the start of a mass voluntary repatriation from Tanzania of 74,000 Congolese refugees, of which 80 percent are Babembe, the U.N. official said. Given the animosity of the Babembe for Rwandese Tutsis and their Banyamelenge allies, the return of the refugees is like "pouring petrol on a fire,'' said another senior aid worker with close knowledge of eastern Congo. In April in Uvira, a Babembe protest against the Rwandese and Banyamulenge was bloodily supressed, killing 36 protestors and injuring scores. Among the injured was Uvira's Territorial Administrator (district commissioner), Bazire Kushebna, accidentally shot in the foot by one of his own soldiers. Kushebna was still on crutches when he welcomed 548 Congolese refugees home on Tuesday. Aid workers say Mai-Mai traditional warriors, backed by soldiers from the defeated Rwandan and former Zairean armies, are also reported to be playing a central role in a fresh outbreak of insecurity in the Masisi region of North Kivu. Looting is also becoming commonplace in Goma, North Kivu, and guerrilla activity is increasing in nearby border areas, aid workers say. People in Goma, North Kivu's provincial capital, have endured years of insecurity with gun law ruling, but U.N. officials said troop movements and widespread ethnic unrest in the region had again heightened tensions. "The provincial security committee is very concerned and under pressure from locals who are literally not sleeping because there are too many shots,'' one senior U.N. official in the region told Reuters. "Almost nightly, units of the national police are finding soldiers breaking into shops and there's been a lot of gunfights. The police are often under-paid and under-equipped to deal with the situation.'' A U.N. report released on Wednesday said towns of Goma and Bukavu were "very tense'' with gunfire at night and reinforcements of strategic points by government troops. The report said Bunyakiri, about 50 miles north of Bukavu, was occupied by rebels at the end of last week and attacks were also reported in towns of Sake and Minova. The U.N. report said the government had moved heavy artillery to Tshibanda, some 22 miles from the town on the Bukavu-Bunyakiri axis. 19 killed in plane crash in Democratic Congo 12:27 p.m. Sep 13, 1997 Eastern BUJUMBURA, Sept 13 (Reuter) - All 19 people on board died when a plane ferrying them to a church convention crashed into a small hill near Lake Tanganyika in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Friday, a U.N. official said on Saturday. Michael Phelps, head of the United Nations mission in Uvira in the eastern part of former Zaire, told Reuters in the Burundian capital Bujumbura by telephone that the dead included an American-Israeli. At least two of the passengers were women, he said. UN says Kabila's Congo impedes massacre probe 04:46 p.m Sep 12, 1997 Eastern By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, Sept 12 (Reuter) - President Laurent Kabila's Congo government has thrown up serious obstacles on the mandate and scope of a U.N. investigation into alleged massacres in his country, the United Nations said on Friday. ``The objections raised by the government continue to pose a serious problem to the team's work,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said of the investigators who have now spent about three weeks in Kinshasa wrangling over the scope of the probe into killings of Rwandan Hutu refugees. Eckhard said the Congo wanted the investigation limited to the eastern part of the country, where most but not all of the alleged massacres were alleged to have taken place. It also insisted that the inquiry could not investigate any abuses after May 17, when Kabila's forces took power ``and we are not comfortable with that restriction,'' Eckhard said. He said the team would have to schedule another meeting with the government ``to try to resolve these matters.'' The probe should have begun on Saturday but this plan ``has again been postponed,'' Eckhard said. The investigation into alleged massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees has become a major factor in future relations between leading Western nations and Kabila's government, which toppled Zaire's veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko last May. Human rights groups have alleged that Kabila's rebels and their Rwandan Tutsi allies carried out systematic genocide of Rwandan Hutus sheltering in camps in the path of their rebel sweep from the Rwanda border. The refugees were remnants of more than a million Rwandan Hutus who fled into the former eastern Zaire fearing reprisals for the genocide of minority Tutsis by Hutu militias and soldiers. Tutsis won a civil war in Rwanda that intensified after the genocide. Kabila denies that his forces targeted Hutu refugees, whose camps included armed former Rwandan soldiers allied to Mobutu's army to resist Kabila's Tutsi-led rebellion. The United States and other Western countries have implied that aid for rebuilding the renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo depends in part on Kabila's cooperation with the massacre probe. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday called Thursday for patience with Kabila's government. ``We are dealing with new regimes which are fragile and not very well established,'' he said, noting that some Kabila supporters were also followers of the late Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba, killed in 1960 by Congolese factions supported by the West. ``For some of them, they believe that the international community deprived them of a chance to rule the Congo and they are very mistrustful that if they are not careful it can be done a second time,'' he said at a news conference. ``So we need to understand this mistrust and have a certain patience with a regime that is trying to take over a country that has more or less collapsed,'' Annan added. But at the same time he said the United Nations was ``going to test the seriousness of the government and we are determined to get to the facts. ``If we get to a situation where it is impossible for us to do our work, then we have to draw the right conclusions.'' UN Congo mission rules out deployment this week 02:13 p.m Sep 12, 1997 Eastern By Arthur Malu-Malu KINSHASA, Sept 12 (Reuter) - A U.N. mission blocked by authorities in Kinshasa said on Friday it had lost any hope of starting investigations this week into alleged massacres in the former Zaire. Investigators have now spent about three weeks in Kinshasa while the government of President Laurent Kabila and U.N. headquarters wrangle over the mandate and scope of the probe. ``There are still problems to resolve. We had hoped to deploy earlier this week, but we will not be able to deploy this week,'' deputy mission chief Reed Brody told Reuters. ``The problem that has been raised by the government relates to the mandate and also to the independence of the investigators. We're hoping the obstacles will be removed,'' added Brody, an American human rights specialist. But Brody could not say if the impasse had reached a point such that the 18 forensic experts and jurists would consider pulling out. ``That's not a decision we can take. It depends on the (U.N.) Secretary General. That would be a political decision,'' he said. The probe into alleged massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees has become a major factor in future relations between leading Western nations and Kabila's government, which toppled Zaire's veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko last May. Human rights groups have alleged that Kabila's rebels and their Rwandan Tutsi allies carried out systematic genocide of Rwandan Hutus sheltering in camps in the path of their rebel sweep from the Rwanda border. The refugees were remnants of more than a million Rwandan Hutus who fled into eastern Zaire fearing reprisals for the genocide of minority Tutsis by Hutu militias and soldiers. Tutsis won a civil war in Rwanda that intensified after the genocide. Kabila denies that his forces targeted Hutu refugees, whose camps included armed former Rwandan soldiers allied to Mobutu's ineffective army to resist Kabila's Tutsi-led rebellion. The United States and other Western countries have now made aid for rebuilding the renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo conditional on Kabila's cooperation with the massacre probe. Despite the standoff in Kinshasa, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Thursday for patience with Kabila's government. ``We are dealing with new regimes which are fragile and not very well established,'' he said, noting that some Kabila supporters were also followers of the late Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba. He was killed in 1960 by Congolese factions supported by the West. ``For some of them, they believe that the international community deprived them of a chance to rule the Congo and they are very mistrustful that if they are not careful it can be done a second time,'' he said at a news conference. ``So we need to understand this mistrust and have a certain patience with a regime that is trying to take over a country that has more or less collapsed,'' Annan added. Brody said members of the team were holding talks on Friday with government officials liaising with the mission. Annan appointed the latest investigation mission after giving in to Kabila's demands about the composition and mandate of a previous team, led by Chilean Roberto Garreton. Kabila objected to a report by Garreton identifying what the Chilean said were more than 100 sites where thousands of Rwandan refugees were killed and blaming the deaths on Kabila's troops. In a letter to Annan last weekend, Kabila agreed to the principle of the probe, but imposed new terms confining the inquiry to the east of the country and to dates preceding his takeover on May 17. Ethnic Fighting Spreads in East of Congo 11:06 a.m. Sep 12, 1997 Eastern By Mark Dodd UVIRA, Democratic Republic of the Congo (Reuter) - Armed conflict in the east of Laurent Kabila's Congo is on the rise with members of a local tribe constantly attacking Kabila's Rwandan Tutsi allies, aid workers say. Aid workers say the semi-derelict town of Fizi, south of Uvira, is a scene of intermittent clashes between the Babembe, former comrade-in-arms of Kabila, and the Rwandan army. Sources in Uvira, a port town on Lake Tanganyika bordering Burundi, say the Babembe resent the dominance of Tutsi soldiers active in Congo. To further its aims they have enlisted the support of armed Hutu rebels from Burundi and soldiers from the former Rwandan and Zairean government armies. ``Fizi is a growing security problem -- it's basically Congolese versus Rwandese, Babembe versus Banyamulenge,'' an aid worker in Uvira told Reuters. Banyamulenge have been in Congo for the past 200 years but for many Congolese they remain Tutsis from Rwanda and are treated as foreigners. ``All key security and administrative positions (in East Congo) are occupied by the Rwandese, especially anything military,'' the aid worker said, adding this was a source of considerable friction with the Babembe who spurned participation in Kabila's rebel alliance. Kabila, who took power in May with Rwandan help after a campaign to oust late President Mobutu Sese Seko, has formed a 32-strong committee to investigate renewed ethnic violence in the east of the former Zaire. Kabila has always used Babembe in his long struggle against Mobutu but they refused to help him when he accepted and incorporated Banyamulenge and members of the Rwandan army into his fighting force. A second U.N. official said Rwanda had last week withdrawn all its soldiers from Fizi but the reasons were unclear. He said there were three possibilities. One involved repeated but unconfirmed claims that a Rwandan commander and his troops had escaped with the monthly salaries for the Congolese soldiers and had looted Congolese military stores. A second reason was that Rwandan troops were needed to reinforce a counter-insurgency campaign in North Kivu, which extremist Hutu soldiers and Interahamwe militia have been using as a springboard for attacks into western Rwanda. The pullout could also be an attempt to calm Fizi at the start of a mass voluntary repatriation from Tanzania of 74,000 Congolese refugees, of which 80 percent are Babembe, the U.N. official said. Given the animosity of the Babembe for Rwandese Tutsis and their Banyamelenge allies, the return of the refugees is like ``pouring petrol on a fire,'' said another senior aid worker with close knowledge of eastern Congo. In April in Uvira, a Babembe protest against the Rwandese and Banyamulenge was bloodily supressed, killing 36 protestors and injuring scores. Among the injured was Uvira's Territorial Administrator (district commissioner), Bazire Kushebna, accidentally shot in the foot by one of his own soldiers. Kushebna was still on crutches when he welcomed 548 Congolese refugees home on Tuesday. Aid workers say Mai-Mai traditional warriors, backed by soldiers from the defeated Rwandan and former Zairean armies, are also reported to be playing a central role in a fresh outbreak of insecurity in the Masisi region of North Kivu. Looting is also becoming commonplace in Goma, North Kivu, and guerrilla activity is increasing in nearby border areas, aid workers say. People in Goma, North Kivu's provincial capital, have endured years of insecurity with gun law ruling, but U.N. officials said troop movements and widespread ethnic unrest in the region had again heightened tensions. ``The provincial security committee is very concerned and under pressure from locals who are literally not sleeping because there are too many shots,'' one senior U.N. official in the region told Reuters. ``Almost nightly, units of the national police are finding soldiers breaking into shops and there's been a lot of gunfights. The police are often under-paid and under-equipped to deal with the situation.'' A U.N. report released on Wednesday said towns of Goma and Bukavu were ``very tense'' with gunfire at night and reinforcements of strategic points by government troops. The report said Bunyakiri, about 50 miles north of Bukavu, was occupied by rebels at the end of last week and attacks were also reported in towns of Sake and Minova. The U.N. report said the government had moved heavy artillery to Tshibanda, some 22 miles from the town on the Bukavu-Bunyakiri axis. UN massacre mission in Congo still on ice 06:47 p.m Sep 11, 1997 Eastern By William Wallis KINSHASA, Sept 11 (Reuter) - A United Nations investigation into alleged massacres committed in the former Zaire remained blocked on Thursday despite a long meeting with representatives of President Laurent Kabila's government, a U.N. spokesman said. ``We are still discussing the details and will be meeting with the government again tommorrow to see if we can finally get to the field,'' Jose Diaz, spokesman for the 18-strong U.N. investigating team told Reuters. Aid officials and local human rights groups say thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees were systematically massacred by Kabila's troops or their Rwandan Tutsi allies during their seven-month campaign to topple veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The U.N. team planned a preliminary visit on Thursday to an area where alleged mass killings took place, but postponed the journey until Saturday due to ongoing discussions. Members of the team met on Thursday for several hours with representatives from the ministries of national reconstruction and foreign affairs. U.N. sources said Saturday's plans could also be jeopardised if disagreements with the government were not settled. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last weekend, Kabila agreed to the principle of the investigation, but imposed new constraints confining the investigation to the east of the country and to dates preceeding Kabila's take-over from Mobutu on May 17. Kabila's goverment ordered the U.N. team to halt its work, and subscribe to new government conditions only three days after they arrived in the country on August 24. U.N. sources said the team was testing the water by trying to make their first journey outside the capital this week. Annan appointed the latest investigation mission after he gave in to Kabila's demands about the composition and mandate of a previous team, led by Chilean Roberto Garreton. Kabila objected to a report by Garreton identifying what the Chilean said were more than 100 sites where thousands of Rwandan refugees were killed and blamed the deaths on Kabila's troops. Kabila seized power in May and renamed Zaire the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mobutu died in exile in Morocco on Sunday. Kabila denies the massacre charges and blames killings at refugee camps on hardline Rwandan Hutus, including former soldiers who lost the civil war in 1994 to Tutsi guerrillas. The refugees were the rump of over a million Rwandan Hutus who fled to Zaire fearing reprisals after the 1994 genocide by Hutu hardliners of minority Tutsis in Rwanda. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytaf-09.16.97-01:27:21-4124