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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Congo Rebels Offered Premiership

The government of war-divided Congo offered Tuesday to let the country's rebels control the premiership -- but said the presidency, held by self-declared leader Joseph Kabila, was not up for discussion.


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The government of war-divided Congo offered Tuesday to let the country's rebels control the premiership-- but said the presidency, held by self-declared leader Joseph Kabila, was not up for discussion.

The proposal came in power-sharing talks to end Congo's ruinous 3 1/2 year war, and was called by the government the best possible deal it could offer.

Rebels immediately rejected it. ``The proposal is unacceptable,'' Adolphe Onusumba of the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy said at the talks' site in Sun City, South Africa.

The talks are meant to come up with a formula for a transitional government to lead Congo out of war and into democracy.

The talks were called for in a never fully implemented cease-fire to stop the fighting, which drew in the armies of six African nations and split the vast central African country into government- and rebel-held sides.

In the government-held capital, Kinshasa, Justice Minister Ngele Masudi told The Associated Press that the government had offered to give the prime minister's post to either the rebels or the nation's unarmed opposition.

``The government has agreed to open the political structures to the rebels. The rebels must lay down their arms, since they cannot win the war with arms,'' Masudi said.

The presidency was not on offer in the deal �� ``because the post of president of the republic is not vacant,'' Masudi said.

Government-held western Congo is now under the administration of Joseph Kabila, who succeeded his assassinated father in January 2001.

His father, Laurent, seized power in 1997.

The Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy and the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement hold the east and north of Congo �� a resource-rich nation the size of Western Europe.

The Congolese Liberation Movement has proposed its own power-sharing agreement. It calls for a presidential council to lead Congo during transition.

Jean Pierra Lola Kisanga, a spokesman for the Rwandan-backed rebel bloc, said the rival rebel group's proposal was simililar to one put forward by Nigeria.

That proposal called for a council of three presidents to lead Congo during a three-year transition with each president taking a one-year turn in the top job, Kisanga said.

South African President Thabo Mbeki was meeting with the two rival rebel factions Monday and Tuesday to try to find consensus, despite the widely varying proposals, Onusumba said.


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