Opposition rallies in Congo

KINSHASA, Congo -- Opposition protesters called on Congo President Joseph Kabila to resign at a rare political street rally on Sunday.

With heavily armed police and army units looking on, about 2,000 demonstrators rallied outside a hotel where a U.N. Security Council delegation is staying to demand that Kabila step down and let political parties run the country.

Protesters hurled abuse and chanted slogans at Kabila, son of the slain strongman Laurent Kabila, calling for a broad internal debate about the future of Africa's third-largest country, Reuters reported.

The protest marked a major test of how Kabila's decision on Thursday to lift a four-year ban on political parties -- imposed by his late father, Laurent Kabila -- is likely to play out on the public stage.

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The protest comes at a delicate moment for Kabila, ahead of scheduled talks with the U.N. delegation aimed at finding ways of resolving a 33-month civil war that has claimed at least 2.5 million lives.

The repeal of the party ban came just hours before the U.N. delegation arrived on its peace-seeking mission.

Kabila has pledged to steer his sprawling and mineral-rich country towards multi-party elections. Demonstrators at Sunday's rally showed they intend to take Kabila at his word.

"We are here to show support for political parties," Dimanya Mpoyi, a 29-year-old supporter of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, told Reuters. "We want democracy today, not tomorrow."

On Saturday, Namibian President Sam Nujoma -- whose country, along with Zimbabwe and Angola is a key ally of the Kinshasa government -- blamed rebel fighters from Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi for what they called the "genocide" of Congolese people.

In a recent report, the International Rescue Committee said as many as 3 million Congolese have died in the conflict. The many-sided conflict has been dubbed "Africa's World War One."

In a stiff rebuke aimed at the visiting U.N. delegates, Nujoma suggested that the Security Council was complicit in the deaths for failing to condemn anti-government rebels backed by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.

"If Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi continue with their aggression and occupation of Congo, we demand that economic sanctions should be imposed on the aggressors so that peace can be restored in this country," Nujoma said, in remarks carried by Reuters.

The U.N. Security Council, for its part, wants to see all foreign troops leave Congo, one of the key elements in the 1999 Lusaka Peace Accords, which also call for disarmament and an internal debate over Congo's future.

Rebel factions control most of Congo's north and east, while the government and its allies hold the capital, and the diamond centre of Mbuji-Mayi.