Global Policy Forum

By Norimitsu Onishi

Most of the giant billboards with the late president's chubby, smiling face, proclaiming "With this man, hope is reborn," have been taken down quietly — so quietly that many residents failed to notice or care, so vast was the gap between the words on the billboards and the reality on the ground.

In the three months since President Laurent D. Kabila was gunned down inside his office here, the government has also begun taking down the wall he had erected around his nation, a wall he used to block any diplomacy to end a war that has drawn in half a dozen African countries.

Joseph Kabila, his 29-year-old son and successor, has criss-crossed Western capitals, including Washington, and found a sympathetic ear. A high-ranking South African delegation arrived here on Monday, and on Thursday Mr. Kabila is to visit another African heavyweight, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. "It's a new style, a new vision of the country," said a senior official in the foreign ministry. "He has put an end to our isolation."

Aware perhaps that his comments amounted to criticism of the father, whose legacy remains unsettled here — witness his unfinished mausoleum — the official added perfunctorily, "Of course, Laurent Kabila remains a national hero."

Since the assassination, almost all the warring parties have withdrawn from their frontline positions and United Nations peacekeepers have begun deploying in small but symbolically significant numbers. And here in Kinshasa, a week after Mr. Kabila dismissed his cabinet, the political class is expecting the announcement soon of a new cabinet whose members will reflect the changes.

Few Congolese seem to think the new president, who had no political experience and little military training despite his rank as major general, is acting independently. But whoever holds the strings — Congo's Angolan or Zimbabwean allies, or the father's powerful advisers — evidently calculated that the father's approach was leading nowhere. "The same people who were making trouble two, three months ago are now cooperating," said a United Nations official here.

The official pointed to the government's relations with Ketumile Masire, the former president of Botswana, who was appointed by the Organization of African Unity to mediate in Congo. The elder Mr. Kabila accused Mr. Masire of favoring the rebels, criticized him for being unable to speak French, blocked him from traveling freely and set up so many obstacles that Mr. Masire closed his office here and left.

But the new president said the government would accept Mr. Masire as mediator and invited him back. On his first return visit, Mr. Masire was warmly greeted at the airport by Abdoulaye Yerodia, a former foreign minister and one of his fiercest critics. Mr. Yerodia, a government hardliner, was also wanted on an international warrant for inciting ethnic hatred against the Tutsi ethnic group.

Mr. Masire visited Kinshasa again this week to organize talks among the Congolese government, rebels, political opponents and civil society, and told reporters, "Fortunately, we have no areas of disagreement."

Such talks were one of the key ingredients of a cease-fire signed in Lusaka, Zambia, in July 1999. All the countries and rebel groups involved in the three-year-old war have often violated the agreement, preferring to fight on to assure their own security, or to plunder Congo's boundless resources. Rwanda and Uganda have backed rebel groups who control roughly the eastern half of Congo; the government has been supported by Angola and Zimbabwe.

After the assassination, all sides agreed to withdraw at least nine miles from their frontline positions. All have complied (except the Uganda-backed Movement for the Liberation of the Congo). Rwanda and Uganda have repatriated troops.

The United Nations Security Council first authorized a 5,500 peacekeepers last year, though the ongoing war made any deployment politically and militarily impossible. (The vastness of Congo means such a small force depends even more than similar operations on local cooperation.) After Laurent Kabila was killed, the Council reduced the planned force to 3,000, including 550 military observers.

Now, nearly 500 troops from Uruguay and Senegal have been deployed in government-controlled cities, mainly to guard United Nations facilities. A few hundred Moroccans are expected Saturday, but it is unclear when the force will reach full strength, said Squadron Leader Paul Beard, a Briton and a United Nations spokesman here. "The momentum is building up," he said. "It will be difficult to resist."

Still, many issues remain unresolved. A panel investigating the assassination was supposed to have released its report by now; high- ranking military officials, including the late president's chief of staff, Col. Edy Kapend, remain in custody. "We have absolutely no idea what is happening politically," said a businessman in the construction industry, who has not built anything since 1990, around the time the end of the cold war stripped Congo of its poltical significance to the West and foreign aid dried up.

During a visit to Germany last week, a day after dismissing his entire cabinet, Mr. Kabila seemed to criticize the cabinet he had inherited from his father. "The changes were necessary to better maximize the potential to react to the problems that are facing the Congolese people," he said at a news conference in Berlin. "It is high time that the region as a whole benefits from peace, not from stupid wars."

He added, however, that he would not include political opponents in his new cabinet, emphasizing instead the importance of public dialogue. He said he hoped to hold elections "as soon as possible," without providing specifics.

Since the end of the cold war, most African nations have adopted multiparty systems, at least in name; with foreign aid increasingly tied to democratization, most have held elections, though very few have been fair. Congo is one of the few countries that have not even attempted elections. The longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko succeeded in corrupting almost all political opponents; the man who toppled him, Laurent Kabila, brutally outlawed them.

Dr. Jean-Baptiste Sondji, who served as health minister under Laurent Kabila until being fired for criticizing him, said the composition of the new cabinet would show whether the young Kabila has the will or the power to press for more openness internally, as he has done in the government's outside relations. "So far things have improved under the son," Dr. Sondji said. "But everybody is worried. If the new cabinet is a flop, I don't think he'll have a second chance."