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 President Joseph Kabila called on Congo's citizens Friday to shun violence during this weekend's historic elections, telling thousands of cheering supporters that their votes can bring peace to the Central African country. But unrest continued ahead of Sunday's vote, with a presidential candidate claiming one his armed guards died and another was injured when Kabila's security forces fired on them.
The election is Congo's first democratic presidential ballot after more than four decades of violence and unrest.
"We want to turn the page," Kabila told a crowd of about 5,000 in an old fairground on the last day of campaigning. "We want elections in calm, peace and discipline."
Kabila, 35, is the front-runner. He became president under a power-sharing deal when his father was assassinated five years ago.
"I ask you to vote for the candidate of the people," he said. "Vote for the consolidation of peace and for the advancement of our reconstruction."
Some 30 people died in politically related violence during a month of campaigning by 33 presidential and thousands of legislative candidates.
With such a crowded field, no presidential candidate is expected to get the necessary majority. A runoff between Sunday's top two winners would likely be held in October.
Candidates include ex-rebel fighters and former allies of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. At stake is control of the purse strings in a country the size of Western Europe larded with troves of timber, gems and ores.
Azarias Ruberwa, a former rebel and now a presidential candidate, said Kabila's red-beret presidential guard fired on his bodyguards as Kabila's procession moved toward the parade ground. Kabila's representatives weren't immediately available for comment.
Most of the officials in the national-unity government, employ guards loyal to them alone.
Ruberwa has strong support for his presidential bid from a minority Tutsi community in Congo's east, but is otherwise unpopular and his fighters were accused of atrocities during the war. His party is considered a likely spoiler if it loses ground at the polls.
Congo tumbled into back-to-back civil wars starting in 1996 and ending in 2002 with peace deals that facilitated Kabila's current transitional administration.
But much of the east remains in turmoil, and that instability is just one of the logistical hurdles facing election organizers in a sprawling country with few paved roads and poor communications.
A campaign event for one of Kabila's main rivals turned violent Thursday, resulting in at least five deaths.
A mob attacked and killed a soldier who allegedly fired into the crowd near a rally in the capital of 20,000 supporters of candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba. Angry youths ran through the streets, burning and looting a church bearing Kabila posters.
The United Nations said another police officer died in the mayhem, and Bemba's officials said three civilians were killed. Before the rally, a fire at a camp for militiamen loyal to Bemba killed two children, witnesses said.
The vote "will not be perfect," Ross Mountain, the top U.N. official in Congo, told reporters by a video link from Kinshasa. But he said sporadic violence has been contained.
The European Union and Belgium, Congo's colonial ruler before 1960, are paying most of the $430 million cost of the U.N.'s election support operation — the world body's biggest ever.
Mountain said the U.N. last week finished training 50,000 election officials who will be joined by international observers at Congo's 12,000 voting centers. More than 25 million of the country's estimated 62 million people are registered to vote.
Associated Press writer Constant Brand in Brussels, Belgium contributed to this report.
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