It has taken a grave deterioration in the Zairean conflict - the virtual collapse of the Mobutu regime - to provoke African leaders into attending a summit on peace and stability in that country. They have now come up with a proposal that tilts towards the rebels led by Mr Laurent Kabila, in that talks between his movement and the collapsing regime are to be held before a ceasefire is in place. Otherwise the summit has endorsed the five point plan drawn up by the United Nations representative, Mr Mahomed Sahnoun, approved by the Security Council and personally represented at the Lome summit by the new Secretary General himself, Mr Koffi Annan.
This is good news which could go a long way to restore credibility in the capacity of African diplomacy to find its own solutions to regional conflict, if it is handled sensitively and intelligently. It has been necessary to tilt towards Mr Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Zaire (ADFL) because, realistically, it looks increasingly likely that it will soon assume power in this, Africa's third largest and one of its richest endowed states. His military and political progress in recent weeks and months has been phenomenal, one of the most dramatic campaigns of African history this century. His representatives have insisted that they are not interested in sharing power with the remnants of the Mobutu government but rather in establishing suitable transitional arrangements for the transfer of power. The shift towards their position at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Lome, has convinced Mr Kabila that he has little to lose by having talks before a ceasefire is in place, which had hitherto been a matter of principle for the government in Kinshasa.
The five point UN proposals cover a ceasefire and negotiations, putting them in the wider context of conflicts in the Great Lakes region as a whole and the need to secure territorial integrity rather than see disintegration of Zaire that might have grave knock on effects. Various outside forces are looking on anxiously, not least the former colonial powers and other western states with an interest in African resources as well as regional stability. Mr Kabila has had support from neighbouring Rwanda and, more significantly, from Uganda. His victory could alter the assumed balance of power between Anglophone and Francophone states that has continued to exercise elements in the French and United States governments.
A strong African diplomatic initiative could powerfully reduce the capacity of such outside forces to determine the political fate of Zaire after Mobutu's departure. So many of the territorial lines were drawn on the African map by European colonialism that is has been astonishing they have endured so long after independence. That they have done so, owes much to the OAU's determination not to see wars fought out over irredentist claims or on behalf of beleaguered minorities, as has happened between European states.
But sanctifying the sovereignty principle over all others has blinded African leaders to other grave political shortcomings, including the trampling on human rights and democratic freedoms by corrupt military dictators exemplified by Mobutu - many of them shored up in turn by western powers. The forthcoming" negotiations have the potential to break decisively from these patterns of African diplomacy in the name of a greater interdependence.