Friday, July 28, 2006

KABILA RALLY ENDS CONGO CAMPAIGN!

Kabila's Kinshasa rally will conclude his campaign. Thousands have gathered in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as President Joseph Kabila returns for a last election rally.
Campaigning is prohibited on Saturday, with voting to start on Sunday.
The elections will be DR Congo's first democratic polls in more than 40 years, and are the culmination of a process aimed at ending a long civil war.
Armed opposition supporters clashed with government security forces on Thursday, and reportedly on Friday. On Friday, crowds gathered at Kinshasa airport and lined the road into the city as Mr Kabila arrived and made his way towards the stadium.

DR CONGO POLLS
33 presidential candidates
9,707 parliamentary candidates
25.6m voters

Reporters' log
The mood was that of a visit by a head of state rather than by an election candidate, the BBC's Arnaud Zajtman reports.
Mr Kabila's arrival was more orderly, but also less well-attended, than was the case when opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba arrived in the city on Thursday.
Security forces, including anti-riot police and the presidential guard were deployed along the way, as Mr Kabila's route to the stadium took him through opposition stronghold districts, our correspondent says.
An official in the RCD, the party of presidential candidate Azarias Ruberwa, told the BBC that a soldier in Mr Ruberwa's entourage had been killed and two others wounded in a clash with Mr Kabila's security forces as the two groups met on the way to their respective rallies.
Correspondents say the incident, as well as Thursday's clash between Mr Bemba's troops and the police, highlights the problem of former rebel leaders who have now become presidential candidates still being able to muster their own troops.
An estimated 10,000 people have gathered at the stadium where Mr Kabila is due to speak, the BBC's Mark Doyle says.
There was also lively campaigning in the southern city of Lubumbashi on Friday, with party supporters carrying placards and playing Congolese dance music through loudspeakers, the BBC's Joseph Winter reports.

At least four people were killed in Kinshasa on Thursday: two babies who died when Mr Bemba's bodyguards' compound was set alight, and two police who died in clashes with Mr Bemba's supporters.
UN envoy Ross Mountain expressed confidence that the polls would be a success.
He said that while Thursday's deaths were tragic, the Bemba rally had not sparked a major confrontation.
"The security forces played a proper, professional role," he told reporters in Kinshasa on Friday. "We were tested I think yesterday, and I believe the Congolese authorities and the Congolese leaders came through that test."
In the east of the country, the leader of South Africa's observer mission, Minister Mlueki George, has expressed concern that police had not yet received riot gear for crowd control nor motor vehicles in the volatile North Kivu province.
Over 25m voters are registered for the presidential and parliamentary vote.
The United Nations has about 17,000 soldiers - its biggest peacekeeping mission in the world - deployed to ensure order.
Before the violence in the capital, one of the last obstacles to Sunday's election was removed on Wednesday when the three main militia groups in the troubled eastern province of Ituri agreed to lay down arms.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

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