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- <text id=93TT2431>
- <title>
- Feb. 08, 1993: Tender into Tinder
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Feb. 08, 1993 Cyberpunk
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK
- WORLD, Page 20
- Tender into Tinder
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>A bank note issued by Zaire's Mobutu touches off military rioting
- </p>
- <p> The spark this time was a new bank note that testified by its
- denomination alone to decades of misrule in Zaire: 5 million
- zaires, valued at a purported $2. The bill was floated by the
- country's long-ruling and long-embattled dictator Mobutu Sese
- Seko--and was promptly declared worthless by his rival in a
- power standoff, transitional Premier Etienne Tshisekedi. Most
- merchants refused to accept the disputed tender. When Zairian
- soldiers were paid with it, they went on an armed rampage,
- looting shops and the homes of several thousand Europeans who
- live in the former Belgian colony.
- </p>
- <p> As many as 50 civilians were killed in the violence,
- including at least seven foreigners. Among them: French
- Ambassador Philippe Bernard, 61, who apparently died in a
- machine-gun attack on his embassy as he watched the
- disturbances. On Friday, Paris and Brussels dispatched a
- combined force of 700 troops to the region to protect and
- possibly evacuate their nationals.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-