KINSHASA, Congo - President Laurent Kabila's son Joseph has taken power in Democratic Republic of Congo as officials gave conflicting reports on whether his father was alive or dead in Zimbabwe after being shot.
Kabila's own ambassador to Zimbabwe said the president was alive but in critical condition.
"As we speak there is a team of Congolese doctors who are attending to him. Obviously he is in a very critical condition but he has not passed away yet," Ambassador Kikaya bien Karubi said in remarks broadcast live on Zimbabwe state television.
But a key aide to Kabila, who held power in the former Zaire for four years, Defense Minister Godefroid Tchamlesso, said the president of the vast, turbulent country was dead.
"We rushed him to an hospital in central Kinshasa where he died. He lost much blood and fought death for about two hours before he dies," the minister told Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi through a translator.
The conversation between Gaddafi and the visiting Congolese minister was broadcast by Libyan television.
"He (Kabila) was shot by one of his bodyguards according to what they said," the minister said, without giving more details.
Earlier, Zimbabwean Defense Minister Moven Mahachi had said Kabila was dead.
"President Kabila has died. It was a pure assassination," Mahachi, whose country has been Kabila's main ally during nearly four years of civil war, told the state news agency Ziana.
Political sources in Harare told Reuters that authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital Kinshasa were delaying an announcement of Kabila's death while they set security arrangements in place to avoid a collapse into anarchy.
Zimbabwe's Minister of State for Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo said his government would issue a statement tomorrow based on the medical report by Congolese doctors "who have been attending to President Kabila."
Foreign governments, including former colonial power Belgium, said Kabila had died after being shot by one of his own soldiers yesterday.
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said Kabila died yesterday after being shot in the back and the leg, apparently while meeting a group of army generals he had dismissed.
In Kinshasa, Information Minister Dominique Sakombi told state radio Kabila had been flown abroad for medical treatment and announced that his son had taken charge.
"The government of public salvation met in a special session ... and decided to entrust the running of the government and military command to Major-General Joseph Kabila," Sakombi told state radio.
Joseph, already the army commander, fought beside his father in the rebellion that toppled veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 and made Kabila ruler of the vast, mineral-rich territory at the heart of Africa.
Sakombi also said that the government was reopening borders and airports that were shut yesterday and relaxing an overnight curfew.
The capital Kinshasa was quiet this morning, a holiday in remembrance of the abduction and murder of independence Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
Roads were mostly deserted except for patrolling army vehicles. The soldiers inside had little to do, passing small groups discussing Kabila's fate and the latest news from foreign radio stations, the main source of information since Tuesday.
"We may not like him very much but ending this way is saddening," said Louis Kalonji, a man standing with one such group in the Lingala district.
Sakombi told Radio France International that Kabila was shot at point-blank range by a bodyguard, who was killed by soldiers as he tried to flee.
Kabila's four years in power have been marked by little but conflict in Africa's third biggest country, which suffered decades of plunder under Mobutu that impoverished most of its people despite its diamonds, gold, copper and cobalt.
British Foreign Office minister Peter Hain told BBC radio in London that Britain's ambassador in Kinshasa had reported Kabila dead, but he did not say what the source of the ambassador's information was.
"It is our hope that whoever replaces Kabila will not be as intransigent as he has been," said James Wapakhabulo, a senior Ugandan official involved in shaping policy on the Congo.
Joseph Kabila was born during his father's long exile in East Africa and is well connected in both Rwanda and Uganda, being much more familiar with the Swahili and English spoken in East Africa than the Lingala and French of western Congo.
Uganda and Rwanda back rival rebel factions against the government, backed in turn by Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola.
It remains unclear whether Joseph Kabila is a stop-gap leader or a designated successor.
Other potential candidates would be Kabila's personal chief of staff, Edy Kapend, who came on television Tuesday to announce a state of alert, and Interior Minister Gaetan Kakudji, who had summoned Wednesday's emergency cabinet meeting.
Zimbabwe, whose President Robert Mugabe was close to Kabila, pledged support for Kabila's family and his country. Namibia said its 2,000 troops would remain deployed in Congo.
Regional security sources said a Congolese aircraft had flown members of Kabila's family, and possibly also his body, to Harare early today.
A Reuters correspondent saw a Congolese aircraft in the military section of Harare airport.
Kabila sprang from obscurity in 1996 at the head of a rebellion with Rwandan and Ugandan backing that fought its way across the country, then known as Zaire, in barely eight months, but only a year later he fell out with his former allies.
Renewed fighting has crushed hopes of ending the war, 18 months after a peace accord was signed in the Zambian capital Lusaka. Up to 2 million people have been displaced by the war and a quarter of a million have fled to neighboring countries.
- REUTERS
Congo fact sheet
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