( Even granted that the Congo should be unified, you don't protect Western security by first removing the pro-Western weight from the power equilibrium.

Leopold then offered France the support of the Association for French ownership of the entire northern bank, and sweetened the deal by proposing that, if his personal wealth proved insufficient to hold the entire Congo, as seemed utterly inevitable, that it should revert to France.

The conference turned the International Congo Association into the Congo Free State and specified that it should have no connection with Belgium or any other country, but would be under the personal control of the King Leopold.

It drew specific boundaries and specified that all nations should have access to do business in the Congo with no tariffs.

In March 1899, the French and British agreed that the source of the Nile and the Congo rivers should mark the frontier between their spheres of influence.

The decision to honor de Brazza as a founding father of the Republic of the Congo has elicited protests among many Congolese, questioning the best use of the money and why a colonizer should be revered as a national hero instead of the Congolese who fought against colonization.

Dr. Ben Coghlan, an epidemiologist in Melbourne Australia, writes: " The US Congress should agree: in June this year they unanimously passed a bill outlining financial and political measures to promote relief, security and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Passed on 22 July, Security Council Resolution 145 affirmed that Congo should be a unitary state and strengthened the call for Belgium to withdraw its forces.

In The Field No 2889, May 9, 1908, R I Pocock wrote " Sir-Since you were good enough to publish in the Field of April 18 my description of the supposed lion-leopard hybrid with its history as issued to the press by Mr Hamlyn, I should like to give what I am convinced is the true story of its origin and antecedents, so as to lay at rest once and for all the idea that it was a natural product of the French Congo.

Until the end of the Cold War, the memories of the Congo haunted the UN as well as convinced the international organization that peacekeeping should remain consensual and non-threatening in nature, an attitude it maintained for almost three decades.

Thirteen Italian airmen who went to the Congo to serve the cause of peace under the United Nations banner have instead met violent death at the hands of Congolese troops supposedly their friends.

But at least the pessimists who believed that the world organization had plunged to its death in that plane crash in the Congo have been proved wrong.

A number of strong independent agencies, established in some cases with governmental or royal support, have conducted large medical, social, educational and research operations in particular parts of the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi.

Statistics have been recognized as a matter of strategic importance in the Congo and in Ruanda-Urundi during the post-war years in connection with long-term economic and social programs.

it has been made far more difficult by what the Belgians have done, or failed to do, in the Congo since 1885.

" Congo and Angola have agreed to suspend expulsions from both sides of the border ," said Lambert Mende, DR Congo information minister, in October 2009.

Hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees have at various times crossed to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The second noteworthy characteristic is that the country borders on very different parts of the African continent: North Africa, with its Islamic culture and economic orientation toward the Mediterranean Basin ; West Africa, with its diverse religions and cultures and its history of highly developed states and regional economies ; Northeast Africa, oriented toward the Nile Valley and Red Sea region ; and Central or Equatorial Africa, some of whose people have retained classical African religions while others have adopted Christianity, and whose economies were part of the great Congo River system.

The Korowai tribe of south-eastern Papua could be one of the last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism, although there have been media reports of soldiers / rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia eating body parts to intimidate child soldiers or captives.

The area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was populated as early as 80, 000 years ago, as shown by the 1988 discovery of the Semliki harpoon at Katanda, one of the oldest barbed harpoons ever found, and which is believed to have been used to catch giant river catfish.

The two recent conflicts ( the First and Second Congo Wars ), which began in 1996, have dramatically reduced national output and government revenue, have increased external debt, and have resulted in deaths of more than five million people from war, and associated famine and disease.

Note that the so-called Kinshasa Highway is not a physical road but a metaphor applied to the route by which AIDS is believed to have been spread east through Uganda and Kenya and neighbouring countries by truck drivers from the Congo.

Kemal Saiki, a United Nations spokesman, said that the Democratic Republic of the Congo does not " even have 2, 000 miles of roads " and that many people traveling around the country fly on aircraft.

All air carriers certified by the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been banned from operating at airports in the European Community by the European Commission because of inadequate safety standards.

Foreign rebel groups are also in the Congo, as they have been for most of the last half-century.

Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Côte d ' Ivoire, have lost large areas of their rainforest.

The four pillars set up by Cão on his two voyages have all been discovered in situ, and the inscriptions on two of them from Cape Santa Maria and Cape Cross, dated 1482 and 1485 respectively, are still to be read and have been printed ; the Cape Cross padrão is now at Kiel ( replaced on the spot by a granite facsimile ); those from the Congo estuary and the more southerly Monte Negro are in the Museum of the Lisbon Geographical Society.

An agent Conrad met when travelling in the Congo, Georges-Antoine Klein, could also have served as a model for Kurtz ( in German klein means " small " and kurz means " short ").

By way of comparison, the Niger – Congo family is said to have some 1, 500 languages.

A final factor which contributed greatly to the fragmentation of the Congo, immediately after independence, was the provincial structure that had been established by the Belgians for convenience in administration.

Patasse has been found guilty of major crimes in Bangui and CAR has brought a case to the International Criminal Court against him and Jean Pierre Bemba from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo accusing them both of multiple crimes in suppressing one of the mutinies against Patasse.

Cannibalism has been well documented around the world, from Fiji to the Amazon Basin to the Congo to Māori New Zealand.

Cannibalism has recently been both practiced and fiercely condemned in several wars, especially in Liberia and Congo.

Cannibalism has been reported in several recent African conflicts, including the Second Congo War, and the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

During its history the area has also been known as Congo, Congo Free State, Belgian Congo and Zaire.

Ground transport in the Democratic Republic of Congo has always been difficult.

On the other hand, the Democratic Republic of Congo has thousands of kilometres of navigable waterways, and traditionally water transport has been the dominant means of moving around approximately two-thirds of the country.

Ground transport in the Democratic Republic of Congo ( DRC ) has always been difficult.

Eight and a half years before writing the book, Conrad had been appointed by a Belgian trading company to serve as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River.

Upon arrival at his station in the Congo, he found that the steamer he was to command had been damaged and was in need of repair.

The Kordofanian languages have not been shown to be more distantly related than other branches of Niger – Congo, however, nor have they been shown to constitute a valid group.