Zaire’s Ambassador to Israel, M’Bude-Nsomi Lobvonabi, is financially embarrassed. He is in arrears in the rent for the Embassy premises in Tel Aviv. Eight members of the Embassy staff, including two Israeli employees, have not been paid their salaries since September. Other Zaire staff members have been forced to move from the posh Herzilia suburb to cheapter quarters in Tel Aviv.
Lobwanabi says the difficulty is temporary. He said that when he requested funds from his government last September, he was reminded that the Zaire fiscal year begins only on January I and that no money would be forthcoming until then.
The Ambassador arrived here in September, 1982, shortly after Zaire re-established diplomatic relations with Israel which it had broken during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Zaire was the first Black African country to reestablish relations, followed by Liberia.
Lobwanabi rented the Embassy villa from a British citizen for an annual fee of $32,000. He supposedly deposited $10,000 security. The rent was not paid and when the property owner’s lawyer tried to withdraw the security band as part payment, he found that it had never been deposited.
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