ZAIRE'S President Mobutti Sese Seko is ready to travel to Congo today for talks with the rebel leader, Mr Laurent Kabila, aboard a South African naval ship, a presidential source said last night.
The report suggested that confusion over the timing of the meeting might have been resolved, it not wrangling over the agenda. Mediators variously announced earlier the talks would start today, tomorrow or Sunday.
"The president will fly to Pointe-Noire tomorrow morning and will be received by President Pascal Lissouba [of Congo]. He will then be taken to the ship," the source said.
Mr Mobutu's camp said the talks would focus on a peaceful transition with elections open to all. Mr Kabila's side insists however the embattled president must stand down after more than three decades in power.
"The talks will just be about Mobutu and what we do with him. Our uncompromising demand is that he leaves power and we shall look after him," Mr Kabila said before leaving his Lubumbashi headquarters for talks in neighbouring countries.
"There can be no ceasefire or indeed elections in this country until Mobutu and all he represents is removed and thrown away," Mr Kabila added.
There was no indication that Mr Mobutti, who seized power in 1965 but is sick with cancer, was ready to step down - although the rebel "foreign minister", Mr Bizima Karaha, said the veteran president had agreed to discuss his departure.
The United States last week threw its weight behind international efforts to get the two rivals to meet to seek a peaceful end to the conflict in the vast central African country and prevent war reaching the capital Kinshasa.
The US envoy, Mr Bill Richardson, who helped persuade Mr Mobutu and Mr Kabila to meet, told reporters in Kinshasa on Wednesday there were no preconditions for the talks.
He arrived in Luanda yesterday to discuss the Zaire crisis with Angolan leaders, and perhaps with the South African Deputy President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, who was also due to meet Mr Kabila there.
Mr Mandela said through a spokesman he would chair the face-to-face talks today aboard a South African naval vessel in international waters off the coast of West Africa.
Mr Kabila's rebels, who took up arms in October, say they expect to capture the capital over the next 10 to 15 days. They now control over a half of Zaire's territory including all its main cities outside the capital.
Their advance was continuing yesterday. Residents of Kenge, Just 200 km from Kinshasa, said Mr Mobutu's army had retreated and the town was calm and waiting for the rebels to arrive - a familiar pattern in a seven-month campaign.
Residents of Kikwit, the rebels' forward base for their march on Kinshasa, said an expected rebel airlift into the town had not begun but reinforcements had been arriving by truck.
The war has trapped Hutu refugees, who fled Rwanda fearing reprisals after the 1994 genocide of Tutsis. Critics accuse Zaire's Tutsi-dominated rebels of killing refugees - or at least leaving them to die.
International efforts to repatriate the Hutus gathered pace. A UN refugee agency official said 1,512 were flown out of Zaire's third city of Kisangani on seven flights yesterday to Rwanda's capital or Cyangugu.
Thousands of other Hutus, many with appalling injuries, streamed back to camps south of Kisangani as UN agencies struggled to clear a backlog of those waiting to be airlifted.