MOROCCO: EX CONGO PRESIDENT MOBUTU DIES AGED 66

Описание: (8 Sep 1997) Natural Sound

Former Zairean leader Mobutu Sese Seko died on Sunday in the Moroccan capital of Rabat after a long battle with prostate cancer.

The 66-year-old autocratic leader was toppled in May after 32 years of despotism that left his country in shambles.

Mobutu had been living in exile in Morocco since his ouster by the forces of Laurent Kabila.

66-year-old Mobutu died at the Mohamed V military hospital in Rabat.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo - formerly Zaire - there was no immediate mention of Mobutu's death on either radio or TV.

Zaire was in ruins when Mobutu was deposed and he died with neither a title nor a country.

Several days after Mobutu fled Zaire, Kabila seized power, proclaiming himself president.

He accused Mobutu of stripping the country of its resources to enrich himself.

Mobutu was the last of Africa's Cold War relics, an autocratic leader who lived like a king while leading his potentially magnificent country down a ruinous path.

Mobutu seized power in a military coup on November 24, 1965, five years after the vast, mineral-rich African country gained independence from Belgium.

As an avowed anti-communist, Mobutu was welcomed as a leader by the West, vying with the Soviets for influence on the African continent.

Mobutu promised to preserve democratic institutions and eventually return the country to civilian rule.

Instead, he declared himself head of state, founded the Popular Revolutionary Movement party.

Mobutu then banned all other political parties, and embarked on a decades-long pursuit of absolute power.

The last presidential elections were held in July 1984, with Mobutu the sole candidate.

Those who endorsed him voted on green ballots, those against him on red ones; the red forms were unavailable at many polls.

He was re-elected to a further seven-year term by 99 percent of the vote.

Through it all, Mobutu maintained Western support because of the region's strategic importance as a Cold War battlefield.

In return for arms and aid, he allowed the U-S to use Zaire as a conduit for sending arms to rebels fighting Angola's Soviet-backed government.

But as the Cold War waned, so too did Mobutu's glory days.

As the former Soviet bloc began competing for Western aid, money to Zaire dried up, with the United States, France, Belgium and the European Union suspending military and financial assistance to protest Mobutu's corruption and human rights abuses.

As the Cold War-era leaders around him began to fall, Mobutu hung on with empty promises of reform.

But his vow in 1990 to hold multiparty elections was never fulfilled, and opposition marches were met with military force.

Kabila began his military incursion into eastern Zaire in September 1996.

Mobutu, ailing from cancer, was in the south of France as cities quickly began to fall.

The dictator returned to Kinshasa to a hero's welcome in December, but soon headed back to France.

He left Kinshasa for the last time in May - his departure welcomed by the international community and the people he left behind, among the poorest in the world.

Mobutu was out of Zaire during most of the advance by Kabila's rebels, recovering from cancer surgery in his palatial homes in Switzerland and the south of France.

When he finally gave up power, he cited only health reasons, ignoring the growing ranks of opposition that had undermined his rule.

Reports suggest he was admitted in June to a hospital in Morocco, where he'd been living in exile.

Officials said he died after a "long illness".

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