Zaire Rebels Break Past Last Defense Rebels Say They’ll Enter Kinshasa Within Hours

Zairian rebel forces broke through the government’s last major defensive position short of the capital on Tuesday and announced that they would arrive in the city within hours, in their final push in a seven-month fight to topple President Mobutu Sese Seko.

Advancing 20 miles in a day of determined fighting, the rebels forced the government to abandon its last fortified position at Bankana, less than 90 miles east of Kinshasa. In a frantic retreat, government forces blew up a bridge at the Bombo River, where they could attempt a last stand, but Western military analysts on Tuesday night gave it little chance for success.

Despite the increasingly desperate situation, aides close to Mobutu described a leader profoundly out of touch, a physically weakened man who has retreated to his bunker and believes that his army, with the help of fighters from the Angolan opposition movement Unita, is actually recapturing lost ground.

If rebel troops enter the city, one official said, there is no doubt that Mobutu would order his army to fight them.

Reacting to the rebels’ announcement that they would enter Kinshasa in a matter of hours, the government imposed a curfew of 8 p.m. to dawn on the city, and called on residents to take up arms to defend the capital.

“The Zairian army forces are determined to defend their just cause and will defend Kinshasa and its environs,” said the government’s information minister, Kin-Keiy Mulumba.

“The government signals that the population has the legitimate right to defend itself with proportional means to the rebels.”

But foreign diplomats said the rebel advance could quickly turn into a rout, and clouded the prospects for a second meeting between Mobutu and the rebel leader, Laurent Kabila, which was scheduled to be held aboard a South African warship off the Congolese coast today.

“They are on their way now,” a Western diplomat said of the rebels, who predicted that the rebels would take Kinshasa as early as Thursday. “This is serious now.”

The South African government, which is host of the talks, said the meeting between Mobutu and Kabila would go ahead as scheduled and said there had been progress toward arranging a peaceful transfer of power to the rebels, but it cautioned that there were no guarantees of an agreement.

Until now, Mobutu has refused demands that he hand over power directly to the rebels, with minimal conditions other than guarantees for his own safety. Kabila has continued to say that he will accept nothing else, and has warned that the meeting on Wednesday would be Mobutu’s last chance for peaceful surrender.

Reflecting the quickly shifting reality on the ground, Zairian officials said the U.S. ambassador here, Daniel Simpson, on Tuesday urged the prime minister, Gen. Likulia Bolongo, to order his remaining troops to allow the rebels peaceful entry to Kinshasa.

Kabila claims to have an army of 70,000 soldiers. Western military analysts cannot confirm that number but say he has recruited heavily in recent weeks after the fall of several major cities. Kabila’s army has also been augmented by the arrival of thousands of second-generation Zairian exiles from Angola, who fought on the government side in Angola’s long civil war.

The rebels’ early recruits came from north and south Kivu provinces and were predominantly Banyamulenge, Zairian ethnic Tutsis. The recruits who were in exile in Angola are Katangese, from southern Zaire.

As combat has drawn closer to the capital, international mediators and foreign diplomats have grown increasingly concerned over the prospect of fighting in this crowded city of 5 million, or a repetition of pillaging by government soldiers, such as occurred in 1991 and 1993.

With that danger in mind, Western embassies have stepped up their calls for their citizens to leave Kinshasa immediately. Meanwhile, 3,500 Western troops, including about 1,200 Americans, in Brazzaville, the Congolese capital, for an evacuation of Kinshasa, were in a state of heightened alert.

In Kinshasa, the news of the rebel advance on Tuesday set off a late-afternoon wave of panic. Travel agencies were packed with wealthy Zairians and foreigners who were scrambling to cross the Congo River to Brazzaville, where many of them hoped to find seats on heavily-booked flights to Europe and South Africa.

The air of panic was increased further when an explosion went off on one of the Congo River ferries returning here early on Tuesday evening from Brazzaville, as wild stories circulated about the opening of hostilities in the city.

In fact, Zairian and Western military sources said the blast, which killed five people, appeared to be the accidental explosion of a grenade, possibly after it had been left on the ferry by a deserting government soldier.

Hoping to speed the government’s fall, opposition parties have called for a three-day strike to paralyze Kinshasa beginning Wednesday, and many politicians have begun organizing welcoming committees to greet the arriving rebels.