Kabila Commends DRC-Tanzanian Ties

President Laurent Desire Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has commended DRC-Tanzanian ties as strong, local newspapers reported Saturday.

The reports quoted Kabila as saying, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) late last week, that the DRC appreciates Tanzania's substantial assistance in his struggle to get rid of the Mobutu regime.

"It is in Tanzania where we did not experience any problems in ferrying military supplies to the front line in comparison with other countries," he noted.

Kabila denied claims that DRC-Tanzanian ties are at low ebb after Dar es Salaam withdrew military advisers from the DRC in August 1998 when a rebellion war broke out to try to overthrow his government.

He admitted the withdrawal of Tanzania military advisers from the DRC's biggest military facility, Kamina, near the Angola frontier where they were training new soldiers hurt his government as they left at the time they were most needed.

"I see nothing wrong in our ties, though they withdrew their soldiers at the time we highly needed their expertise," Kabila told the BBC Kiswahili Service Editor Dunstan Tido Mhando who interviewed him in Kinshasa.

Unlike other African states, Tanzania has been kept neutral in the endless bloody conflicts in the DRC between the government forces supported by Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia and the armed rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda.

Clarifying on reasons behind his failure to attend the funeral of the late Tanzanian founding president Julius Nyerere and the swearing-in of President Benjamin Mkapa, Kabila said rebels increased incursions in north and southern-eastern Congo made him stay home.

"We, freedom fighters highly regarded Dr. Nyerere's role for African liberation and unity. It was the increased rebel attacks which forced me to miss the event. It was unwise to leave Kinshasa at that moment," he said.

During the interview, the first ever with a foreign journalist since he came to power after toppling former president Mobutu in May 1997, President Kabila denied that he once lived in Tanzania as a refugee.

" What I know is that Dar es Salaam was for me and my fellow fighters a major working station in our efforts to topple Mobutu," he added.

Recently, the DRC has requested Tanzania to mediate the multinational war but the latter remained at a low tune.






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