Zaire Reforms Urged After Marchers Slain

Western envoys met Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko on Monday to press for political reform after troops killed at least 13 Christian marchers demanding that a national conference be resumed.

A Kinshasa human rights group said at least 15 were killed when soldiers shot at a demonstration Sunday. Zairian opposition sources in neighboring Congo put the death toll as high as 42. The Zairian government put the death toll at 13.

Medical sources said prominent opposition leader Joseph Ileo was among those slightly injured in the march.

U.S. Ambassador Melissa Wells, Belgian Ambassador Jean Coene and French Charge d’Affaires Dominique Pin met Mobutu.

A joint statement by the envoys, read to Reuters news agency by a Belgian Embassy spokesman, said the meeting was held “with the aim of expressing to President Mobutu . . . suggestions relating to the relaunch of the democratization process.”

The envoys requested the meeting last week to demand that Mobutu resume a national conference to chart the country’s political future, but it was delayed because he was out of Kinshasa. The statement said the diplomats also had a separate meeting with the chairman of the national conference, Catholic Archbishop Monsengwo Pasinya. It gave no further details.

Separately, the European Community on Monday condemned the killings in a statement issued in Lisbon. “The Community and its member states . . . vigorously condemn the acts of violence perpetrated by the security forces in Kinshasa on 16 February, 1992, and deplore the fact that a large number of innocent victims were injured or killed,” said the statement by the 12 EC foreign ministers.