PRESIDENT Mobutu Sese Seko's remaining loyalists staged a show of support for Zaire's sick President yesterday, accusing the United States of sponsoring the rebels who control more than half the country.
About 3,000 members of Mr Mobutu's Popular Revolutionary Movement (MPR) turned out in the capital Kinshasa, which rebel leader Mr Laurent Kabila says he will capture by June.
The MPR's acting leader, Mr Mananga Dintoka Pholo, said Mr Kabila had the blessing of a "western power, when he launched his rebellion in the east last October with the help of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.
Mr Mananga reiterated the government's disgust that a US company, America Mining Fields (AMF), signed, what it said was a 51 billion mining contract with the rebels this month.
AMF is registered in Canada but has its headquarters in President Clinton's home town of Hope, Arkansas.
"The principal aim of the allies is to seize our mineral riches, Mr Mananga said to applause".
In his speech at the People's Palace, Mr Mananga did not mention the US by name but there was no doubt which power MPR supporters blame.
The 66 year old President did not attend, the meeting of the once omnipotent party he founded in 1967 and whose 30th birthday party on May 20th could be spoiled by the rebels. Mr Mobutu remains cloistered in his residence inside a Kinshasa barracks, receiving few visitors.
The increasing anti West and anti US rhetoric emanating from the beleaguered regime coincides with the imminent arrival of Mr Bill Richardson, the US ambassador to the United Nations.
A task force of US, Belgian and French troops is across the river from Kinshasa, in the Congolese capital Brazzaville, ready to move in to evacuate their nationals if violence erupts.
Diplomats in New York said earlier Mr Richardson would try to get peace negotiations started between Mr Mobutu and Mr Kabila.
The sense that the rebels are closing in pervades the atmosphere in Kinshasa, an unkempt city of five million people.
The rebels are still at least 400 km away in the east but could threaten the capital much faster if Angola allows them to cross its territory and seize Zaire's only seaport at Matadi.
Zaire said on Friday 1,400 Angolan troops had invaded from the enclave of Cabinda and moved into the border town of Yema.
State radio claimed yesterday that two Angolan army helicopters had landed at Kimpangu and Kimvula, inside Zaire, less than 200 km south of the capital.
Angola has denied such claims but expatriate mining officials in Angola said on Friday the Zairean rebels and the Angolan army were performing joint military exercises at Dundo, on the Angolan side of the border.
Mr Mobutu's long term support for Angola's UNITA rebels would explain the government's help for Mr Kabila, diplomats in Kinshasa said.
AFP adds:
The international relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) yesterday accused rebels sweeping across eastern Zaire of stepping up massacres of Rwandan refugees and said survivors should be granted asylum abroad.
Camps that once held 85,000 refugees were empty and survivors had fled, it said.
In a three point plan, MSF (Doctors without Borders) said Mr Kabila's forces should immediately cease attacks on the refugees.
Secondly, it said UNHCR should give up plans to repatriate the refugees to Rwanda, saying Kigali's government was hindering medical and other aid and backed Mr Kabila's rebels.
Thirdly, it said the refugees should be provisionally welcomed in a country of the region where their security can be guaranteed, other than Zaire and Rwanda".
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, described rebel treatment of the refugees as slow, extermination and a UN food agency spokeswoman making a comparison with Hitler's Germany, said: "The expression Final Solution is not exaggerated.