Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Mon 10 Oct 2006Congolese vote in hope of ending years of civil war which killed four millionCONGO: Millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo voted yesterday in the first free presidential elections since independence in 1960, and in the hope of ending a decade of invasion and civil war thought to have killed four million people.The ballot was orderly, with a steady stream of enthusiastic voters and few irregularities reported. There is widespread anxiety though that the promise of the election bringing peace, even laying the foundation for a new prosperity across central Africa, could be lost in conflict over the result.