Reuters Africa Highlights / [Dec 3]

[Reuters]

GOMA, Zaire - Zairean rebels said they had driven government
troops out of two more towns in the northeast and panicked
foreigners pulled out of the area for fear of killing, looting
and mayhem. Commander Jean Kabongo, special security adviser to
rebel leader Laurent Kabila, told Reuters in the town of Goma
that both Bunia and Walikale had fallen to rebel forces.
KINSHASA - Zaire's badly paid, unndisciplined army looks
unlikely to soon be able to retake eastern borderlands seized by
rebels, aid workers and analysts said. Facing both lack of
discipline from within its own ranks and a widening rebel front,
the Zaire army's much touted counter-offensive looks unrealistic
in the short term.
ENTEBBE, Uganda - Over two weeks after the United Nations
launched a multinational force to save refugees in Zaire, only a
few hundred troops have reached the region and they are still
hundreds of miles from where food may be needed. At Entebbe
airport command on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, the
troops are biding their time while the politicians try to clear
the obstacles to deploying the force.
KAMPALA - Ugandan officials said Ugandan troops shelled
eastern Zaire but did not deny Kampala newspaper reports they
had pushed into Zaire and since returned. Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Louis Balinda said Uganda denied accusations by
Zaire's government that Ugandan troops fought alongside Zairian
rebels to capture the eastern Zairian coffee-growing town of
Beni. But Balinda said Ugandan government forces shelled Zaire.
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations said a military force
was still needed in eastern Zaire despite allied plans to scale
down or eliminate plans for troops and drop food by air instead.
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BANGUI - Rebel soldiers and loyalist troops fought
gunbattles on the streets of the Central African Republic
capital, where shops and businesses have closed and districts
have divided into competing areas of control. A two-week-old
mutiny, the country's third this year, has shifted from
grievances over pay and status to rebel demands for the
resignation of elected President Ange-Felix Patasse.
- - - -
CAPE TOWN - South African cabinet ministers held crime
prevention talks with Muslim vigilantes, three of whom were
reported to have sat through the meeting with Palestinian-style
scarves wrapped around their faces.
CAPE TOWN - Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi,
saying she had not been allowed to leave her home since Monday's
student protests in Rangoon, appealed for moral and practical
support for her party.