It was only to be expected that the Mobuturegime would do its utmost to avoid humiliation, even to attempt a last desperate battle, as it stares defeat in the face from the rebel forces led by Laurent Kabila. Moves over the weekend to instal Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo as a transitional figure who might mediate the handover of power have provoked outright opposition from Mr Kabila's forces, who say they will now abandon the initiative taken by Mr Nelson Mandela to ensure a peaceful change of power. Mr Kabila charges that Mr Mobutu is using the extra time to consolidate his forces and frame new alliances with Angolan UNITA elements. His spokesman says they will now "talk and fight and fight and talk".
If this means there will be a battle for Kinshasa rather than, as the US mediator, Mr Bill Richardson, has put it, a "soft landing" for the Mobutu regime, it will partly have been because the shine has gone off Western attitudes towards Mr Kabila as a result of his disastrously inept handling of the refugee crisis in eastern Zaire coinciding with the final military thrust towards Kinshasa.
Anyone following this crisis closely will be aware that at every point along its way in the last three years political realities have overridden concern for the refugees among the major parties to the conflict. This is because those who fled Rwanda in 1994 were the losers of its war and harboured among them the defeated leadership responsible for the genocide. It is impossible, therefore, to separate the two issues; there is a straight continuity between the victory of the Rwanda Patriotic Front in Rwanda and Mr Kabila's extraordinary military success over the last seven months.
But this does not exculpate the Rwandan government from treating those accused of war crimes with fair legal process and providing for the safe return of refugees; nor does it excuse Mr Kabila's movement from their responsibility to ensure safe access by international agencies to the refugees in the territory they control, much less the necessity to ensure their safety from attack by forces with which they are no longer militarily engaged. Mr Kabila's basic democratic credentials are being examined closely as his movement comes to power.
It would be naive to expect democratic elections before the civil war is over; it would be foolish to overlook how closely Archbishop Monsengwo is associated with the Mobutu regime he has been living in exile in Rome and the decision to appoint him was taken in the absence from parliament of the opposition. But the horrifying accounts of refugee suffering in recent days have provided striking confirmation of the human realities of this war and of the need to ensure that it is resolved by civilised means which reject that barbarism. Mr Kabila must combine an awareness of these facts with his determination to put an end to the Mobutu regime.