Angolan Troops Battling Rebels Move Up Congo River

Angolan troops pressed ahead Monday with a major intervention in this nation, seizing an Atlantic naval base and an oil port from anti-government rebels and moving up the Congo River on the heels of a faltering insurgency against President Laurent Kabila.

Angolan sources near the border told news agencies that an estimated 2,000 Angolan troops and paramilitary police had poured into Congo in tanks and trucks since Saturday. Angola’s forces now appear to be the largest and most decisive of the four foreign militaries skirmishing over Africa’s third-biggest country.

On Sunday, Angolan forces crippled the rebels’ 3-week-old advance on Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, by capturing the guerrillas’ main base at a coastal military airfield in Kitona, about 240 miles southwest of here. It was the first serious defeat for the rebels, who are backed by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

Kabila, who deposed longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko 15 months ago, is fighting the same ethnic Tutsi forces in the Rwandan and Congolese armies that--along with Ugandan troops--sponsored his own uprising and recently turned against him.

The Angolan buildup appeared to shift the tide of this latest conflict in Kabila’s favor. But it was viewed with alarm by South African President Nelson Mandela, who fears it could provoke Rwanda and Uganda to intervene more forcefully and bring all-out war to the heart of the continent.

Mandela won endorsement Sunday from 14 African countries--including Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Angola--to seek a negotiated truce. Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos pledged privately that his troops would not move beyond the captured Kitona airfield “because they want a cease-fire, which is a very healthy attitude,” Mandela said.

But Congolese government and rebel spokesmen said Monday that the Angolans had moved on from Kitona and chased the rebels out of two towns--Banana, home of Congo’s only naval base, and Moanda, an oil port that pipes fuel to Kinshasa and its 6 million inhabitants.

Angolan troops were later reported advancing through a corridor of Congolese territory from the sea toward Kinshasa, targeting rebel airfields at Boma and Matadi. Transport planes continued to ferry fresh Angolan troops Monday to their staging area in Angola’s Cabinda enclave on the Congo border.

Heavy shellfire was reported around Kasangulu, 19 miles south of Kinshasa, where the rebel advance bogged down.

“Angola has brought in more equipment, more jets, more helicopter gunships,” said rebel spokesman Dieudonne Kabengele. “We are resisting them, and the fighting is very, very heavy.”

Witnesses told news agencies that dead and wounded men were being brought into Cabinda and loaded onto planes heading south to Luanda, the Angolan capital. There were no reliable casualty figures.

Acknowledging the intervention for the first time Monday, Angola said it was aimed at bringing about “a political solution to end the crisis.” But South African Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo condemned the deployment, saying it was in conflict with the spirit of Mandela’s peace mission.

Howard Wolpe, a U.S. special envoy to the region, has joined the peacemaking effort and met Monday in Angola with President Dos Santos. Wolpe said their talks were “very positive and constructive.”

An estimated 600 Zimbabwean troops have also come to the aid of Kabila’s ill-equipped army. They are protecting Kinshasa or advancing from here toward a column of at least 1,500 rebels that is being attacked from the rear by Angolans.

Ethnic Tutsis in Kabila’s army started the uprising Aug. 2. They seized cities along Congo’s northeastern borders and ferried troops across the country on hijacked airplanes to the Kitona base, where they were joined by holdovers from Mobutu’s army and began moving on Kinshasa.

The rebels’ help from the armies of Uganda and Tutsi-ruled Rwanda has been mainly logistical, but neither country is believed to have intervened on the scale Angola has.

Bizima Karaha, who was Kabila’s foreign minister before joining the insurgency, said Angola’s massive involvement has made chances for a negotiated settlement “almost impossible.” His comment mirrored statements by Kabila’s aides that there can be no cease-fire until Rwandan and Ugandan troops leave Congo.

Angola’s intervention came after days of indecision and reflected the same concern over border security that motivated Rwanda and Uganda. All three governments have been plagued by armed rebels seeking to operate from bases in neighboring countries.

“The Angolans were sitting on the fence, waiting to see who might come out ahead in Congo,” a senior European diplomat said. “In the end, they were motivated by a desire to be on the winning side and to bring a rapid end to the conflict, knowing that a Congo weakened by war would not be able to control the movements of the Angolan rebels.”

Because northeastern Congo is far from Angola, the diplomat said, it is unlikely that Angola’s army would be willing to help Kabila mount a counterattack on the rebels there. Rebels have held the border cities of Goma, Bunia, Uvira and Bukavu since the start of the uprising, and Sunday they seized the Congo River port of Kisangani, Congo’s third-largest city, with little resistance.