Collapse Of Mobutu’s Rule Near, U.S. Says, Urging Transition Role

As violence swept through the streets of Zaire’s capital Wednesday, the White House sharply stepped up pressure on President Mobutu Sese Seko to step aside.

In its harshest comments to date about Mobutu, a longtime American ally, the White House declared that the end of his autocratic regime was inevitable. “Mobutuism is about to become a creature of history,” Mike McCurry, the White House spokesman, told reporters Wednesday morning.

But administration officials said they remain unsure what kind of rule might follow a collapse of Mobutu’s government and are wary of the intentions of Laurent Kabila, the leader of Zaire’s rebels, who now controls about a third of the country.

Officials at the White House and the State Department insisted that they were not calling on Mobutu to resign, but rather for him to help create a transitional government that would hold democratic elections. McCurry acknowledged that he was skirting the lip of such a request, saying, “Ambiguity is an art form.”

But when pressed for elaboration, he added, “I think that it’s clear that we have to move beyond President Mobutu and think about how we begin to structure a government that can address the needs of the Zairean people, and that’s what the United States is committing to supporting.”

Harshly repudiating a leader that successive administrations treated as an ally for decades, McCurry defined “Mobutuism” as “the state of disrepair of the Zairean political economy, the sad conditions that many people in Zaire live in now, the lack of effective political representation that the people of Zaire have suffered under for some time.”

From the time he took power in 1965, Mobutu received hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States until Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration, cut off all direct military and economic aid in 1990. The United States still provides some aid to Zaire through nongovernmental organizations.

The CIA worked closely with Mobutu for years, funneling money through him to pro-Western guerrilla forces in Angola, according to Angolan military commanders and Western diplomats in Zaire.

About 500 Americans remain in Zaire. American military forces are standing by directly across the Congo River from Kinshasa, the Zaire capital, prepared to evacuate them if necessary, officials said. McCurry said the American troops had been deployed only to help evacuate U.S. citizens in Zaire, not to play a wider role in a change in government.

As reports came in about spreading violence and arrests in Kinshasa, American officials seemed uncertain about the rapidly shifting political situation there, although they said they remained in contact with Mobutu’s government.

“We may have a situation where there are two prime ministers in Zaire, or two people who say they are prime minister,” said Nicholas Burns, the State Department spokesman.

Burns appeared to be referring to efforts Wednesday by Zairean Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi, a longtime opponent of Mobutu, to defy the state of emergency that Mobutu declared on Wednesday.

Administration officials said the United States had not attempted to send signals through intermediaries to urge Mobutu to step aside. “We couldn’t do that,” one official said. “Mobutu could have used it against us with the French.” The French government remains an ally of Mobutu.

Bernard Valero, the press counselor of the French Embassy in Washington, said France supported negotiations between the rebels and Mobutu’s government, which are taking place in South Africa. The United States is also supporting that process, hoping it will lead to democratic elections.

An administration official said that Washington remained unsure whether Kabila, the rebel leader, will embrace democracy. “There’s room for hope, but I don’t think anyone wants to be overconfident about that,” the official said.