Zaire Leader Agrees to Meet With Rebel Chief

In what could emerge as the major diplomatic breakthrough to end Zaire’s civil war, President Mobutu Sese Seko has agreed in principle to meet with Laurent Kabila, the rebel whose forces have seized about half the country in a drive to end Mobutu’s 32-year grip on power.

The agreement was announced Thursday in Cape Town by United Nations envoy Mohammed Sahnoun shortly after South African President Nelson Mandela formally invited Mobutu to peace talks. The talks are expected to take place “very soon,” a South African official said.

Diplomats in Kinshasa, the Zairian capital, said Mobutu, whose army has folded in each encounter with the rebels and whose treasury has been reported empty, has been forced to drop his longtime insistence that a cease-fire precede any meeting with his rival.

Mobutu’s untenable military position, lack of funds, dwindling popularity in the capital and the possibility that Kabila’s forces would soon be able to cut food supplies from the interior pressured the proud and aging autocrat to accept reality, said an African diplomat. “We may have an unknotting very quickly now,” the diplomat said. For Mobutu, “the situation is getting quite serious.”

Diplomats see the meeting as a means for Mobutu, 66, to save face before making a graceful exit and thereby spare Kinshasa and the rest of the country a traumatic final struggle.

After months of treating Kabila as a renegade and bandit, a subtle shift of attitude could be detected among authorities. The pro-government newspaper Le Soft suddenly treated Kabila on a par with Mobutu, declaring in a banner headline that the two together will make “The Peace of the Brave.”

According to Sahnoun, the meeting will “discuss transitional arrangements” leading to democratic elections. Although no date for the meeting was announced, diplomats said that it could take place within days and that the most likely site is South Africa.

The invitation to Mobutu was delivered by his representative, Honore Ngbanda, who had traveled to South Africa on Wednesday. Kabila also was there Wednesday to meet with Mandela but was back in Lubumbashi--Zaire’s second-largest city and now under rebel control--by Thursday to discuss the upcoming talks with advisors.

“I am confident that a peaceful solution will be achieved,” Mandela told reporters after the meetings. He said Kabila agreed not to press for a “military solution” and that the rebel chief has no intention of humiliating Mobutu. Meanwhile, Sahnoun paid tribute to Mandela for bringing about the agreement, “a remarkable achievement in view of the complexity of the issue.”

While Mobutu has agreed in principle to talks, some diplomats and other observers in Kinshasa still question whether he realizes that his time in power is really over. There are persistent reports that those around him are afraid to tell him how tenuous his situation is, although diplomats said they have tried to put the reality before him as bluntly as possible.