Congo Talks Fail; Capital Nearly Out of Food

The failure by regional leaders to broker a cease-fire in Congo on Tuesday has dimmed hopes for peace as the country’s capital edges toward the brink of a food crisis.

Seven leaders, including three backing President Laurent Kabila’s 15-month-old administration and two opposing it, ended three days of talks in the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls without an agreement on how to end the monthlong Tutsi-led rebellion.

The talks ended as diplomats and aid workers in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, said there was only enough food to last the city’s 5 million inhabitants another four days.

“There are not more than four days of food stocks left in Kinshasa,” said Ibrahim Jabr, the resident head of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF. “I don’t see how a city of more than 5 million can go through this.”

The hastily arranged summit, which was announced by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe during the Non-Aligned Movement summit in South Africa last week, sidelined a six-man rebel delegation in Victoria Falls to attend the talks.

Analysts said the exclusion of the rebels from the talks was key to the failure of the summit and would remain central to any resolution to the conflict in the future.

Congolese rebel leaders left Zimbabwe on Tuesday saying there would be no cease-fire before Kabila negotiated with them directly.

“They’re not going to make any progress until they agree that the rebels should be there,” said Greg Mills, an analyst at the South African Institute for International Affairs.