U.S. Considers Seizing Vast Wealth of Zaire’s Mobutu to Force Him Out : Africa: Increasingly painful sanctions may be used as West grows frustrated at dictator’s refusal to surrender power.

The Clinton Administration, facing mounting pressure from Capitol Hill and American organizations focused on Africa, is considering seizure of the vast personal fortune of Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko to force him to surrender power in the mineral-rich Central African nation.

According to Administration officials and congressional sources, Washington hopes to join with Belgium and France, the European nations with the greatest influence in Zaire, to impose increasingly painful economic sanctions against a dictator who enjoyed Western support during the Cold War but now is regarded as an embarrassing anachronism--a greedy autocrat in an era of advancing democracy.

“We’re looking at more pressure, more nattering and so forth,” a State Department official said. “A lot of people are sick and tired of this whole thing. They think that the problem is heavily concentrated in one man.”

On Capitol Hill, there is even some support for creation of a multinational military force to depose Mobutu if peaceful measures prove inadequate. That idea seems a bit far-fetched, and the State Department official said the Administration is opposed to military measures. But the fact that the subject has even been raised demonstrates the growing frustration at Mobutu’s continued hold on power.

“It’s just foolish to keep talking words without talking about military intervention,” said a congressional foreign policy specialist.

Last August, Zaire seemed on its way to a peaceful transition to democracy when a Mobutu opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi, was installed as prime minister under a constitution that reduced the office of president to that of a figurehead. But Mobutu, with the backing of much of the army, has refused to recognize the new constitution or to yield power. And, according to a State Department official, Tshisekedi has shown little aptitude for government and seems unable to outmaneuver Mobutu.

Several times this year, the army has gone on rampages because soldiers are unpaid, or paid by Mobutu only with new bank notes that the Tshisekedi government has declared worthless. Last month, troops besieged the Parliament and held deputies hostage until the notes were declared legal tender.

The stakes in Zaire are enormous. If the growing unrest leads to total anarchy, the result would be far more dangerous for the world than the famine and anarchy in Somalia because Zaire, slightly more than one-quarter the size of the United States, has far more strategic weight than Somalia.

Even if it doesn’t get that bad, the results could be serious.

“We may just see the state collapse and leave a big hole in the middle of Africa that will just have to get by without a central government,” said I. William Zartman, director of African Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.) is rounding up support for a resolution calling on the Clinton Administration to freeze Mobutu’s investments and bank accounts in this country and to call on European nations to do the same. If the economic pressure fails, Payne’s proposal asks Washington to join with France and Belgium to call for a U.N. military force to push Mobutu out.

The Administration has no enthusiasm for military action, and most of Mobutu’s other American critics believe economic sanctions alone will be enough.

Payne and other Mobutu opponents believe that the 62-year-old dictator has socked away as much as $10 billion outside the country. State Department officials said that his personal fortune is probably less than that because Mobutu has spent vast sums maintaining the loyalty of the army and other groups. But virtually all experts agree that money is the lifeblood of the Mobutu regime.

Private American advocacy groups focusing on Africa generally support a get-tough approach, although some members admit that they are uncomfortable with the prospect of predominantly white governments forcing political change in Africa.

Imani Countess, executive director of the Washington Office on Africa, conceded that the implications of ousting Mobutu trouble her, but she said: “When a political leadership in the country has been democratically elected and they are calling for it, we can support it.”

Randal Robinson, director of TransAfrica, was more emphatic: “You judge human rights compliance with the same yardstick. It doesn’t matter if it is South Africa or Zaire. If we urge intervention in South Africa, we must do the same with respect to other countries that are in violation of human rights.”

Robinson said the U.S. government has an additional responsibility to deal with Mobutu “because this scourge was imposed on the people of Zaire, largely by the United States. Zaire is not as responsible for him as we are. He is a creature of the Cold War tussle between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union.”

A State Department official agreed that Robinson makes a valid point about American complicity in Mobutu’s rise. But he said the Administration cannot base its policy entirely on those historical facts.

“If guilt were a basis for policy, I’m sure we would be doing more,” the official said.

BACKGROUND

Born Joseph Desire Mobutu in what was then the Belgian Congo, Mobutu is a former sergeant in Belgium’s colonial army who seized power with U.S. and Western backing in 1965, ending a chaotic rivalry between pro-Communist and anti-Communist factions. For three decades, he put his vast country, the second-largest in sub-Saharan Africa, at the disposal of the CIA and other Western agencies, which used it as a staging base for activities throughout the continent. In exchange, he enjoyed a free hand at home, diverting for his own use billions of dollars from Zaire’s mineral wealth while leaving most Zairians in poverty.