Kabila goes too far

The United Nations has been looking into frightful allegations that President Laurent Kabila of Congo, inheritor to the realm and, it increasingly seems, to the manner of Joseph Mobutu, massacred tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees. Kabila's response has been to harass and intimidate the UN team to a point now compelling Secretary-General Kofi Annan to pull out the investigators.

For many people, this will be all they need to know to make a judgment on the mass murder allegations against Kabila. Why else but to cover up an involvement in killing would he insult the United Nations and put his international standing on the line?

It is not that the United nations has been pushy or peremptory with regard to President Kabila. On the contrary, his accession was welcomed as a new broom to sweep up after the crashed President Mobutu. Doubts about him were widely suppressed.

Encouraged by the Clinton administration, Annan saw to the removal of the chief investigator appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission, and otherwise deferred to Kabila's views on how the team should be run.

This is the same President Kabila whom President Bill Clinton met just last month in Uganda. Clinton praised him for ousting the late president Mobutu but warned about his record since, stating. "You haven't come this far to fail."

Inconvenient as the exercise may be, President Kabila's conduct makes it unavoidable to ask whether he is the solution or the problem of post-Mobutu Congo.

-- The Washington Post