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Albright in Africa: The Embraceable Regimes?

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December 16, 1997, Section A, Page 3Buy Reprints
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When Madeleine K. Albright flew to Africa last week to begin her first tour of the continent as Secretary of State, the aim was to open a new era in relations by embracing a ''new generation'' of leaders that Washington has cited as examples for others to follow.

But by the time Ms. Albright flew from Zimbabwe to Europe today, at the end of her seven-nation tour, events throughout her visit -- like the questions she faced from audiences here and there -- served instead to cast doubt on Washington's new African choices.

Ms. Albright made obligatory references to the need for democracy in almost every country she visited, but African commentators and critics of the Administration's new Africa policy noted that her very choice of countries seemed to undermine any American emphasis on democratic development in a continent still struggling with a heavy legacy of dictatorship.

Except for South Africa, power was won by the gun in every country Ms. Albright visited. And although Africa is not lacking in fragile but reasonably well-functioning democracies, Ms. Albright's visit with Nelson Mandela was her only meeting with an incontestably democratic leader.

In Congo, the centerpiece of Ms. Albright's tour, bitterness over her itinerary was particularly sharp. Congolese opposition leaders complained that Washington and the West generally gave only tepid support to their democratic struggle against the three-decade dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, who finally fled an armed revolt in his country -- then called Zaire -- and died in exile earlier this year.

And once Mr. Mobutu was seriously threatened, Washington and many other Western capitals enthusiastically backed the rebel leader who overthrew him in the spring and who has since become President, Laurent Kabila.

''Frankly, we are somewhat confused by the signals Washington is sending to Africa these days,'' said Serge Kalonji, a Congolese opposition leader. ''For years we were lectured about the virtues of democracy and the need for the rule of law, and we took this to heart. But in reality, if you want to get Washington's attention and respect, you are better off picking up the gun.''

During their stop in Congo, as they did with other leaders throughout the trip, Ms. Albright and her entourage steadfastly played down Mr. Kabila's democratic and human rights shortcomings. Ms. Albright's announced tactic of ''listening more and talking less'' ultimately led to embarrassment, when Mr. Kabila gave a mocking performance at their joint news conference. Warning that he would continue to imprison his opponents, he smirked as he sarcastically pronounced ''Vive la democratie'' at the event's conclusion.

Ms. Albright was generous in her expressions of regret for serious flaws in Washington's past policies, notably its long support for Mr. Mobutu, and for its failure to react swiftly to the Rwandan blood bath, which saw half a million members of the Tutsi minority and some moderate Hutu there killed by the Hutu majority.

Critics of Washington's new approach say Ms. Albright's Africa team must go further still, if it is to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Washington's support or opposition to African leaders in the past was based almost entirely on cold-war calculations of national security and access to mineral wealth.

But, even absent the cold war, some critics say that Washington's new policies eerily mimic those of the past. Like Washington's discredited old allies, the new favorites on the continent -- leaders like Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia and Gen. Paul Kagame in Rwanda -- have been embraced largely for security reasons.

Mr. Museveni and his counterparts in Ethiopia and Eritrea are closely cooperating in an American-supported bid to unseat a strict Islamic Government in the Sudan that has for years tried to impose Islamic law on a non-Muslim south, and that Washington accuses of supporting international terrorism.

Washington's new allies in Rwanda and Congo, meanwhile, are counted on to keep a lid their countries, which are seen as potentially explosive, and therefore costly. But in each country, events during Ms. Albright's visit only underlined the precariousness of the United States' bet.

As Ms. Albright was leaving Rwanda, Hutu militiamen attacked a camp of Tutsi refugees in the country's northwest, killing hundreds. The same day, armed rebels overran Bukavu, a major provincial city in eastern Congo.

During her stop there, Ms. Albright expressed sympathy and understanding for Rwanda's leaders, who are mostly Tutsi and remain deeply scarred by the 1994 killing frenzy waged against their minority, who make up only 15 percent of Rwanda's people.

Left unaddressed, critics of Washington's policy say, is whether reconciliation in Rwanda can ever be achieved under minority military rule, or if United States support for the Tutsi Government is merely delaying another violent day of reckoning by a disenfranchised and angry Hutu majority.

While some of Washington's new African allies have begun to rehabilitate their devastated economies, they have been far slower to reform their methods of governing. Free elections are unheard of, and the arrest of journalists and other human rights abuses are common.

In official briefing papers for Ms. Albright's trip, shortcomings like these were neatly glossed over. Mr. Museveni in Uganda, for example, who does not permit multiparty politics, was called a ''beacon of hope'' who runs a ''uni-party democracy.''

Elsewhere in Africa, where multiparty elections are regularly held under international pressure, albeit often with flawed results, the American praise for Uganda was met with harsh criticism. Some saw the approach as hypocritical and patronizing, charging that the policy said, in effect, that the West does not expect Africans to uphold widely held standards of democracy or human rights that are emphasized in other parts of the world.

''In the 1960's, many American experts on Africa were supporting one-party states, citing Africa's supposed specificity,'' said Peter Rosenblum, projects director of the Harvard Human Rights Project.

''Today, we seem deeply unbothered by the widespread rights violations in Ethiopia, the failure of Uganda to secure the rule of law, or by the creation of a Tutsi military ethnocracy in Rwanda,'' he added. ''In Congo, people in the Administration resent questions about human rights.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 3 of the National edition with the headline: Albright in Africa: The Embraceable Regimes?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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