August 18, 2000
A Nigerian general who presided over his country's return to democracy last year is being sent to Congo by Secretary General Kofi Annan to try to salvage what is beginning to look like a doomed peacekeeping operation.
The general, Abdulsalami Abubakar, who took over the government after the death of the military ruler Gen. Sani Abacha in 1998 and opened the way for the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo, has been asked to go to Congo immediately to try to establish a working relationship between the government and the United Nations mission, known by its initials in French as Monuc.
The appointment follows a warning from Mr. Annan to the Security Council this week that the Congo operation may have to be reconsidered in light of the failure of President Laurent Kabila's government to cooperate with an advance United Nations mission and to provide the necessary conditions for the deployment of peacekeeping troops.
About 5,500 troops and support workers were to be sent to Congo only when fighting had stopped, the peacekeepers' safety could be reasonably guaranteed and Mr. Kabila had taken steps to open a political discourse with his opponents. Mr. Kabila, who seized power from the former president, Mobutu Sese Seko, in 1997, has never held an election or allowed political parties to operate freely.
Mr. Annan has asked General Abubakar "to make clear once more the position of the Security Council and the role of the United Nations organization mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo," a spokesman for the organization, Manoel De Almeida e Silva, said today. "The special envoy has also been requested to take up the issue of an apparent propaganda campaign that has been conducted against Monuc and its staff."
Today in Kinsangani, a contested diamond mining center in eastern Congo, a British United Nations official sent as part of an advance party was found hanged in his hotel room, the United Nations representative in Congo, Kemal Morjane, said in Kinshasa. United Nations officials do not know if his death was a murder or suicide. The body of the dead man, Joseph Comerford of the United Nations Development Program, was being flown out of the country.
Mr. Comerford arrived in Kisangani on Monday to begin to assess damage caused by recent fighting there between Rwandan and Ugandan troops who had fallen out after a joint invasion of Congo two years ago. The Rwandans, Ugandans and rebels they support now say they have withdrawn from the city, which the United Nations had hoped to use as one of several peacekeeping bases.
Rwanda, Uganda and Congo were among the signers of a 1998 peace accord that met in Lusaka, Zambia, early this week to try to hasten a solution to the Congo crisis, which has drawn half a dozen nations into Africa's biggest war. But Mr. Kabila left the meeting early and returned to Kinshasa, leaving President Frederic Chiluba of Zambia, the meeting's host, with no progress to show for the talks.
In a worsening political climate in Kinshasa, two American diplomats were asked today to leave the country. Denise Burgess, the public affairs officer, and Roger Moran, a political counselor at the United States Embassy, were ordered out of Congo within 48 hours. American officials said the United States ambassador, William Swing, had been given the order by Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Yerodia, who is considered to be the most anti-Western of Mr. Kabila's ministers.
Diplomats have been told that Ms. Burgess and Mr. Moran were thought to have made remarks at a social event that Mr. Kabila found objectionable. A pro-government newspaper accused them of "dining with assassins," an indication that they may have been keeping in touch with a variety of political groups.
