Sanctions threat to Congo

Lusaka - Southern African leaders threatened sanctions against the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday after the failure of…

Lusaka - Southern African leaders threatened sanctions against the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday after the failure of a summit called to try to revive a peace pact in Africa's third-largest country.

The Congolese President, Mr Laurent Kabila, refused to give ground on two key issues: deployment of UN troops and his rejection of the former Botswana leader, Mr Ketumile Masire, as organiser of all-party internal talks on the political future of the former Zaire.

"We have not been able to achieve what we hoped to achieve," King Mswati III of Swaziland said after the talks.

Mr Kabila and his allies, Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Sam Nujoma of Namibia, emerged from the talks after 13 hours, leaving other leaders in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to talk for a further six hours.