Dialogue moving towards a solution

Negotiations on the political future of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were on Saturday moving towards a solution, observers in Sun City commented.

"The real negotiations started with [South African] President Thabo Mbeki's arrival," said Albert Mpeti, a spokesman for the DRC's opposition Parti democrate et social chretien (PSDC).

The talks were scheduled to end last Friday, but were given a new lease of life after Mbeki arrived on 8 April. He made concrete proposals on 10 April, which were then revised the following day.

A spokesman for the Rwandan-backed rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma), the main opposition to the current DRC president, Joseph Kabila, said on Saturday that Mbeki's revised set of proposals were "much more acceptable". A key question was whether a council of state envisaged under those proposals would have enough power, said the spokesman, Thomas Nzira Timana.

The council of state would consist of Kabila, the leaders of the two main rebel movements - RCD-Goma and Jean-Pierre Bemba's Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo - and a prime minister from the civilian opposition.

A European observer commented that the council of state could work, although there would be the "triangular problem" - that where power was shared among three people, there was a tendency for two of them to gang up against the other.

The civilian prime minister is clearly envisaged as having less power than Kabila and the rebels.

The choice of prime minister is narrowing down, although at least 10 individuals have submitted their candidature. Three of the front runners are Etienne Tshisekedi, the 69-year-old leader of
the Union pour la democratie et le progres social; Francois Lumumba, son of the Congo's first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba (who was assassinated in 1961), and leader of his father's party, the Mouvement national congolais; and Gerard Kamanda Wa Kamanda, leader of the Front commun des nationalistes, who was in government under Tshisekedi.

Tshisekedi and Kamanda served in governments under former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, but both were in opposition for more than a decade before his fall. Lumumba was in exile from the age of 10 until the late 1990s.

Three other potential prime ministers are Eugene Diomi Ndongala, leader of the Front pour la survie de la democratie en republique democratique du Congo (FSD); Andre Bo Boliko, leader of the PSDC; and Arthur Z'Ahidi Ngoma, leader of the Forces du futur. Ndongala and Bo Boliko were both ministers under Mobutu before becoming oppositionists.