Congo President Joseph Kabila said on Friday he would seek political consensus if he won a crucial run-off vote next month, while his rival's coalition complained it was being muzzled by unfair media bans, according to Reuters. Kabila, who assumed power in 2001 after his father was assassinated, will confront vice-president and former rebel chief Jean-Pierre Bemba in a deciding second round of historic presidential elections set for Oct. 29. As the two rivals consolidate their alliances, fears have been rising that war-scarred Democratic Republic of Congo may find itself split between the Swahili-speaking east, which largely supports Kabila, and the Lingala-speaking west, where Bemba commands strong backing. Addressing these fears, Kabila said at the end of a visit to neighbouring Angola he would seek to work with a wide gamut of political forces if he won the vote. "I'm a person of consensus and cohabitation and the doors will be open to all sons and daughters of the Democratic Republic of Congo interested in the development and reconstruction of their country," he said, in comments quoted by the official Angolan news agency Angop. Kabila and Bemba finished frontrunners in the July 30 first round of the elections, the first free polls in more than 40 years in the vast, former Belgian colony. The vote is the culmination of peace deals ending Congo's 1998-2003 war which caused a humanitarian crisis that has killed four million people.
