Zaire

KINSHASA, Zaire -- For a time, Kinshasa University had the best equipment money could buy.Now, its halls are littered with broken desks and broken equipment. Physics students perform their experiments in empty wine bottles. Professors last received their $30 monthly salary in December."It's not only here," says Okuma Kassende, head of the school's chemistry department. "The university is an example of what is happening all over the country. You find the same thing in the hospitals, in the primary and secondary schools, and in government buildings."

PRETORIA, South Africa -- With a hesitant handshake and words of peace, negotiators from the two warring sides in Zaire opened their first face-to-face negotiations here yesterday.Mediators hope the two sides will agree to a cease-fire and set a formula for the future governance of the chaotic Central African republic, steps that could involve direct talks between Zaire's ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko and rebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila.Kabila's rebel forces have seized control of a quarter of the country in six months and are now heading toward Lubumbashi, Zaire's second-largest city.

LONG-DELAYED negotiations between Zaire's apparently invincible rebels and its supposed government were to begin in Pretoria, the South African capital, today. The representatives of rebel leader Laurent Kabila were there yesterday and ready to talk of an orderly transition of power. It wasn't clear whether representatives of the government were showing up.It doesn't matter. Yesterday, Mr. Kabila's troops took the diamond center of Mbuji Mayi and were closing in on the copper capital and second city, Lubumbashi.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Newly assertive South Africa is taking the lead in the tortuous search for peace in Zaire -- a role that the United States and other powers have hoped the South Africans would take in this and other conflicts.The government of President Nelson Mandela, acting on the warring factions' stated interest in peace negotiations, has offered to serve as host to talks in Johannesburg this week that could lead to a breakthrough in the civil war, during which the rebels have seized about a quarter of the country.

WITH THE DECLINE OF ARMIES after the Cold War, and the end of white rule in southern Africa, trained troops went on the market, only too available for hire by whoever might pay.Mercenaries from Europe were conspicuous in the Croatian-Bosnian militia in the early '90s, and others from the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in the Bosnian forces. A quixotic brief seizure of the Comoros Islands two years ago, by a French senior citizen who had invaded a half-dozen countries in his career, raised the specter of government by mercenary in one weak country after another.

KINSHASA, Zaire -- Kisangani, Zaire's third largest city and the last major government-held outpost in eastern Zaire, fell to rebel forces yesterday, posing the most serious threat yet to the 31-year-rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko.The capital, Kinshasa, was quiet as details of the battle spread slowly among the population, but for many the fall of Kisangani, the centerpiece of the government's fight against the 6-month-old rebellion, raised serious questions about the ability of Mobutu's government to survive.

IT IS ABUNDANTLY clear that Zairians will not fight to save the presidency of Mobutu Sese Seku, whose chief protectors are foreigners: Hutu refugees who were soldiers in Rwanda; Serb and Croatian mercenaries, and some UNITA insurrectionaries of Jonas Savimbi in Angola. But Zairian civilians, aside from the ruling clique in Kinshasa, are more afraid of the Zairian army -- unpaid looters who won't fight -- than of the rebels. Better the devil they don't know.Rebel forces of Laurent Kabila are moving inexorably forward from the fifth of the country they occupy.

KINSHASA, Zaire -- With a rebel force that invaded Zaire advancing through the countryside, new protagonists who want to secure vital interests here or settle old scores are being drawn into the conflict.With the fall of the longtime dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, appearing ever more likely, governments of neighboring countries and insurgent groups from throughout Central Africa are scrambling to get involved on one side or the other of the conflict, diplomats, Zairian officials and regional military experts say.A growing coalition of forces is contributing to the fight against Mobutu, in what can be seen as a form of revenge for the decades during which Zaire, a major Cold War ally of the West, was used as a staging point for covert actions against neighbors.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The United Nations has evacuated all foreign aid workers from the eastern Zaire city of Kisangani, leaving thousands of Rwandan refugees to an uncertain fate, U.N. officials said yesterday.The move came one day after the secretary-general called for an international peacekeeping force in eastern Zaire.U.N. officials said aid workers had been pulled out because the increasingly feeble Zairian government could no longer guarantee their security in Kisangani, a strategically important city on the Congo River that rebel forces have been trying to capture.

SOUTH AFRICA was initially hesitant to get involved in the Zaire crisis. In November, when the Great Lake region summit discussed spreading rebellion in that pivotal Central African country, President Nelson Mandela's envoy was such an insignificant observer he had to sit outside and wait.But now that other peace efforts have failed, President Mandela is using his stature in the international community to start what may be the last opportunity at mediation. Rebel leader Laurent Kabila secretly jetted to South Africa to meet with Mr. Mandela.