Jean-Pierre Bemba

Late on 15 April there were signs of a back-room deal between Kabila and rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba which would exclude other armed and non-armed political groups...

Mbeki proposes that Kabila remain President subject to approval of his decisions by the two Vice-Presidents Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC backed by Uganda) and Adolphe Onusumba of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD backed by Rwanda)...

Just five days before the opening Jean-Pierre Bemba has pulled his Mouvement de Libération du Congo out of the talks because he claims many of the parties there will be mere fronts for President Joseph Kabila and give him an unfair advantage in the negotiations...

Jean-Pierre Bemba's Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo says it does not care about the round-table's results...

President Joseph Kabila and rebel leaders Jean-Pierre Bemba and Adolphe Onosumba are due to meet in Abuja Nigeria on 13 December to speed up negotiations to end the war and set up a transitional regime...

Within a year Uganda started backing the Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo under Jean-Pierre Bemba...

Museveni's one-time protégé in Congo Jean-Pierre Bemba at the Congolese 'pre-dialogue' in Gaborone Botswana in August joined the general call for the immediate withdrawal of foreign (including Ugandan) troops from Congo...

Some observers hope that confidential talks between the three main parties - Kabila's government the RCD-Goma and Jean-Pierre Bemba's Mouvement de Libération du Congo - will find a way round the obstacles...

Jean-Pierre Bemba's Front de Libération du Congo (FLC) whose alliance with Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba's Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social (UDPS) and others is called the Union des Forces pour le Respect Intégral des Accords de Lusaka also suspects that neither Kabila nor the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD)-Goma really wants their own foreign military backers to leave...

Jean-Pierre Bemba by contrast wants to keep control of his own territory once the foreign troops pull out...

The leader of the (armed) Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) Jean-Pierre Bemba complained on 10 June about deliveries of Belgian weapons to the Kinshasa regime; the Belgian Foreign Affairs Ministry says there have been no such deliveries...

He probably feared that his family interests in the Oubangui valley were threatened by Patassé's relationship with Jean-Pierre Bemba leader of the rebel Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (see Box: The Mobutu factor)...