Mugabe addresses national consultation meeting

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Sunday addressed the church-organised national consultation meeting underway in Kinshasa and urged the Congolese to choose between “slavery and sovereignty”. He said the forum was for “unity” and would also enable the Congolese people to decide their “own fate” without “foreign intervention or external aggression”, DRC state television reported. “That is our ambition and that is why we are defending the sovereignty of Congo,” he said.

Meanwhile, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who sent a special envoy to the meeting, stressed that the DRC represents Africa in “miniature”. “It is therefore important to put an end to the war that is tearing the country apart,” he said.