Guerrillas Zaire

Nine senior military officers said they would join the rebels fighting to overthrow President Mobutu Sese Seko in eastern Zaire. The officers were among those who were leading the Zairian army when Goma and Bukavu--key cities on the border with Rwanda--fell to Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire last year. The officers said they were called back to the capital, Kinshasa, and were suspected of supporting the rebels.

In what could emerge as the major diplomatic breakthrough to end Zaire's civil war, President Mobutu Sese Seko has agreed in principle to meet with Laurent Kabila, the rebel whose forces have seized about half the country in a drive to end Mobutu's 32-year grip on power. The agreement was announced Thursday in Cape Town by United Nations envoy Mohammed Sahnoun shortly after South African President Nelson Mandela formally invited Mobutu to peace talks.

In an ominous development threatening more than 100,000 exhausted Rwandan refugees facing starvation and disease in eastern Zaire, rebels blocked the United Nations on Friday from starting a massive airlift to carry them home. The Hutu refugees have been on the run since 1994 and are on their last legs, dying at a rate of about 60 a day, although that rate is half that reported earlier this month. Officials of the Office of the U.N.

Laurent Kabila flew into this diamond-mining heartland Monday to survey the latest conquest by his rebel force in its seven-month battle to unseat President Mobutu Sese Seko. Kabila arrived in Mbuji-Mayi accompanied by foreign diamond-mining executives. "Laurent! Laurent!" a group of young men chanted at the airport. About 100 teenage boys yelled the rebel leader's middle name: "Desire! Desire!"

As rebel troops marched in triumph into Kikwit, the last major city on their path to this capital, President Mobutu Sese Seko and rebel chief Laurent Kabila agreed Tuesday to a face-to-face meeting as early as this weekend. Kabila said the two agreed to meet, with South African President Nelson Mandela as host, aboard a South African naval ship for discussions that might forestall a violent overthrow of the Zairian regime.

If doubts remained that the clock is ticking on the 32-year reign of President Mobutu Sese Seko, rebel chieftain Laurent Kabila on Wednesday gave the president and his courtiers in this capital a timetable for packing their suitcases. The guerrilla leader, who now controls more than a third of this mineral-rich nation, said he will be in Kinshasa "in three weeks' time, and I am very serious."

Rebels blocked aid workers from entering Rwandan Hutu refugee camps near the eastern Zaire city of Kisangani, saying they acted to restore order after local Zairians, angered by the killing of six villagers, began looting aid supplies and stoning foreigners. The identity of the killers was not known, but residents blamed Rwandan Hutu refugees. The rebel action further slowed U.N. efforts to move the estimated 100,000 refugees back to their homeland.

Rebels continued their relentless march through Africa's third-largest nation Monday, apparently seizing a strategically important Zairian rail hub even as preparations for peace talks with the government proceeded. The rebels, called the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire, claimed to have moved into Kamina, a rail hub in the southern province of Shaba, putting them within easy reach of Lubumbashi, Zaire's second-largest city, news agencies reported.

The three guerrillas looked menacing amid the market stalls. Two held shiny assault rifles. Their leader, a huge man with a bushy beard, wore a pistol at his side and a brown beret atop his dusty fatigues. Suddenly they stopped and gruffly ordered Marie Lifaefi to fill a bottle with cooking oil from the vat at her feet. When she finished, the leader slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out . . . money. He smiled, paid for the palm oil, and the rebels wandered on.

The United States on Wednesday called for order and concrete steps toward democracy in Zaire, but the Clinton administration's entreaties went unheeded as the large Central African country cascaded further into bloody chaos.