The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is to swear in Wednesday as president Joseph Kabila, the young and politically untested general who inherits the war-torn chaos of this huge African country a day after his murdered father and predecessor was laid to rest.
A senior government official told AFP the 32-year-old general would be sworn in at 3:00 pm (1400 GMT).
Kabila was hurriedly appointed as the country's leader after a bodyguard assigned to protect his father Laurent shot the former president dead on January 16.
Justice Minister Mwenze Kongolo said the young Kabila was put in charge because the DRC was "on the verge of calamity and chaos and we had to be responsible" in moving fast to fill the power vacuum.
The senior government source, who asked to remain anonymous, said parliament would formally approve the appointment in order to give Joseph Kabila the judicial and political foundation to his leadership. His oath will be taken before the Supreme Court.
The ceremony comes a day after hundreds of thousands of emotional supporters turned out for the burial of his father in a Kinshasa mausoleum close to the Congo River.
The burial of the former Marxist guerrilla came as the central African country faces a regional war that has split it in half, and the possibility of dangerous divisions in the armed forces following the strongman's death.
Joseph Kabila descended into his father's vault to lay a single flower on the coffin after a 21-gun salute and a fly-past by a squadron of fighter-jets.
The heads of state of Angola, Malawi, Namibia, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and senior representatives of other nations also left flowers in the mausoleum, outside the historic Palace of the Nation.
Troops from the DRC's allies, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, meanwhile locked Kinshasa down, patrolling alongside DRC troops and police.
The cabinet, dominated by ministers from Kabila's southeastern province of Kantanga, said Monday Angola was sending reinforcements to secure Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, the Katangan capital, and witnesses said they saw at least two Angolan battalions -- some 2,000 men -- arriving.
Several hundred Zimbabwean troops control the Kinshasa airport, equipped with tanks and heavy artillery.
The young Kabila, who spent several years with the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front which won that country's vicious 1994 civil war, was trained in China and is little known to the DRC public.
He has not yet made a public address, as is customary before a parent's funeral, but has met with ambassadors, army chiefs and religious leaders since the government put him at the head of the state last Wednesday.
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who went into talks with Kabila after arriving for the funeral Tuesday, later told reporters he wanted to see more democracy and moves to end the two-and-a-half year war which has pitted the government and its allies against rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda.
Michel said he also called for "the release of prisoners, acceptance of a facilitator for internal Congolese dialogue and a chance for political parties that want to to resume political activities."
DRC Foreign Minister Leo She Okitundu said the general would "take into account (Michel's) observations during his speech to the nation” expected within the next few days.
Michel said the new leader had listened to him "with great attention and great interest" and described Kabila as "a very calm" person.
But anti-Western sentiment, in particular anger at the former colonial power, was rife in the streets.
A crowd in Kinshasa yelled at members of the Belgian delegation attending the funeral, calling them "assassins" and "diamond thieves," while hurling objects at their buses.
Interior Minister Gaetan Kakudji said that "the government reassures you (the people of the DRC) that it will never exclude anyone," adding: "Let's stop making the whole world believe that DRC politicians are mediocre."
After the funeral ended, General Kabila went into talks with his allies, presidents Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, officials said.
His father, who overthrew longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in May 1997 after an eight-month guerrilla war, was shot on last week at the presidential residence, by a bodyguard who pumped three bullets into him before being shot dead by colleagues.
The government later announced that it had flown him to Harare for medical treatment, and that he died in the Zimbabwe capital on January 18 -- KINSHASA (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
