Killing Casts a Shadow Over Meeting

Opening a summit meeting that the Congolese leader Laurent Kabila was to have attended, heads of state from across Africa spent a moment today mourning Mr. Kabila -- even as his aides back in Congo were continuing to insist that he was not dead. ''I invite you to observe a minute of silence in memory of our dear brother, Laurent Kabila,'' President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, the presiding official, told delegates assembled for a two-day summit meeting of mostly French-speaking African countries.

Like most of the world, the leaders gathered here in this West African capital appeared to assume that Mr. Kabila had indeed been fatally shot hours before he would have left for the meeting. Yet as they began the proceedings, what little was being said was guarded, as participants awaited Congolese confirmation that what Le Messager, the Cameroon newspaper, had on Wednesday as its headline -- ''Kabila Assassine'' -- was indeed the truth. ''Our happiness,'' Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations said in a speech, ''is tempered by the uncertainty of the fate of President Laurent Desire Kabila.'' Only later today, nearly two days after the palace shooting reportedly happened, did the Congolese government announce that Mr. Kabila was in fact dead, and even then it said that he had died only today after clinging to life for nearly 36 hours in a Zimbabwe hospital.

Uncertainty over Mr. Kabila's situation, however, provided a surreal start to the summit meeting. Wednesday night one arriving leader after another left his plane and marched nearly underneath a visage of the slain president, whose portrait was hanging with those of other leaders across a balcony overlooking the tarmac. But this morning, as the leaders began arriving at the conference center, Mr. Kabila was missing from a similar row of portraits inside the entrance. His absence, Mr. Annan said, would be felt as the meeting's participants took up globalization, this year's theme. Although the war-retarded economy of Congo is a long way from being integrated into the world's economy, its troubles are hurting the wider region. Conflict, as an obstacle to globalization, was to be a central issue in this meeting in which Congo and its president were to have had starring roles.

Whether this meeting could have helped resolve the civil war in Congo is another question. Few of the key figures in the conflict, which has involved six countries along with several rebel movements, were expected to attend. Indeed, aside from President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who stopped in briefly today before the formal opening of the meeting, only Namibia's president, Sam Nujoma, was here.

With many of the leading actors absent, the United Nations secretary general took the opportunity to assure them and the world of the United Nations' commitment to Congo and to implore the warring parties to practice restraint. ''I want to reaffirm the world's determination to play a key role in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo,'' Mr. Annan said. ''I would like to call on all of the neighboring countries and all of the countries involved in that process not to complicate the situation, but instead to help the affected population of the Congo find peaceful solutions.''

Source: New York Times