JOHANNESBURG, May 1: Peace talks between Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko and rebel warring leader Laurent Kabila Are to be held on Saturday aboard a South African warship, according to a Zairean minister.

``We understand the talks have been postponed until Saturday,'' reports reaching here quoted Zaire's Information Minister Kin-Kiey Mulumba as saying in capital Kinshasa.

South African President Nelson Mandla is travelling to the West African country of Gabon to prepare for the peace talks which he is expected to chair on board the South African Navy ship, Outenigua, off the Zairean coast. The date and venue of the meeting have engaged the two sides in lengthy discussions over the past few weeks and the final outcome was the result of some hectic diplomatic shuttling by US and UN envoys.

Prospects of the direct peace talks, which seemed dim after Mobutu reneged on Monday night on an earlier pact to attend the face-to-face meeting, brightened up after United States' special envoy, Bill Richardson, held more than two hours of talks with the Zairean President in Kinshasha.

United Nations special envoy Mahomed Sahnoun has also been involved in negotiations to persuade Mobutu to meet Kabila under the chairmanship of Mandela.

The talks were originally planned for tomorrow.

Just before his departure for Gabon, Mandela said he was certain that the talks would be productive.

``President Mobutu and President Kabila are responsible leaders and I am certain that they will work in the interests of all the people of Zaire. A new agreement should not only be in the interests of the leaders but in the interests of the masses of Zaire,'' he said.

Both, Mobutu and Kabila, have stuck to their respective stands: Kabila, 56, wants Mobutu's resignation while Mobutu is calling for a ceasefire. More than half of the central African country is under the rebels' control who are now barely 300 km away from the capital.

Observers believe that Mobutu, 66 and ailing, has amassed millions of dollars over the years and it is understood that he will leave the country for France where he has a number of palatial homes. His family has already left the country for France.

Several hundred Rwandan Hutu refugees were meanwhile successfully repatriated to their homeland by the United Nations. The rebels, accused by the UN of blocking the repatriation and of allegedly killing some of the refugees, helped by providing rail transport.

Tens of thousands of exhausted, hungry and terrorised Hutu refugees have been on the move for months as rebel forces have advanced across the country. They fled in to eastern Zaire to escape retribution back home for the part played by extremist Hutus in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

On Wednesday, 236 Rwandan refugees, including 186 children separated from their families, left here for the Rwandan capital, Kigali on the first big repatriation flight since the search for the missing refugees began.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.