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Jose ph Kabila, catapulted into the presidency of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) early in 2001, will oversee a two-year transition to elections after naming a unity government for the vast central African country.

He was just 29 years old, although already a senior army officer, when a bodyguard gunned down his father Laurent, who had seized power from longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

The elder Kabila's aides, fearful that Kinshasa would erupt in factional fighting, pushed the little-known son into the top job.

He swiftly proved to have a mind of his own, along with a sober personality, which contrasted with the raw power his father had exuded.

Sworn in on January 26, 2001, he managed in the two years that followed to unite many of the DRC's 50-million people behind him and engineered the signing of peace treaties with Rwanda and Uganda, which backed rebels in a war that had started in 1998.

Kabila's army was supported by troops from Angola, Chad, Namibia and Zimbabwe, making the war Africa's most complex.

An estimated 2 500 000 people are estimated to have died in the war, either directly in combat or indirectly through disease and starvation.

Most of the victims are civilians.

Kabila spent most of his life in exile in Uganda and Tanzania while his father directed a rebel band from abroad, and is still more at home in English and Swahili than in Lingala, the main language spoken in Kinshasa.

He also speaks good French, the DRC's official language.

The father of a daughter about four years old, he detests alcohol and does not smoke, enjoys driving fast cars and likes watching sport on television.

The second oldest of nine children, he began studying law at Uganda's Makerere University in 1996, but interrupted his studies to join his father's rebellion against Mobutu, launched in September of that year.

He underwent military training in China after his father toppled Mobutu in May 1997, then was appointed head of the army in September 1998, a month after the latest war broke out.

He has largely dispelled suspicions of ruthlessness put around by rumour-mongers who claimed he had been involved in the summary arrests and killings for which his father had become known.

With a stated aim of wanting "to work for peace", Kabila has been tireless in his travels and diplomatic efforts to relaunch peace accords signed in Lusaka in 1999, and has dismissed some members of his father's old guard.

He moved quickly to end a ban on activity by opposition political parties, and unhooked the DRC franc from the dollar, a move, which sent consumer prices shooting up but brought him into the good graces of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which have resumed cooperation with Kinshasa.

Days after enacting a peace accord on April 1 this year, Kabila promulgated a new constitution in Kinshasa on April 6 and took an oath of office under it.

On June 30, the day DRC celebrated 43 years of independence from Belgium, Kabila named an interim government that will, in 24 months, longer if necessary, take the vast country through to democratic elections - only the second since independence.

He shares power with four vice presidents drawn from the two main rebel groups, the political opposition and the government.

The new government has 36 ministers and 25 deputy ministers.

Naming the government, Kabila urged the Congolese people to put aside the ethnic differences that have divided the central African country, and finally unite their vast nation.

"The country is emerging painfully from a war that has sorely tested national cohesion," said Kabila on Monday.

"I call on you to commit yourselves to the nation... as political affinities and regional divisions cannot take precedence over the overall good of the country, no more than does belonging to a tribe or an ethnic group".

"Reunification, the return to peace, the restoration of territorial integrity and the reestablishment of the authority of the state over national territory are not negotiable," he said. - Sapa-AFP.

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