Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday adopted a new constitution aimed at bringing an end to decades of dictatorship, war and chaos in the vast country, and paving the way for elections by mid-2006.

Thousands of people, including regional presidents, gathered in the gardens of the presidential palace in the capital Kinshasa, cheering and waving paper replicas of the country?s new flag as President Joseph Kabila signed into law the new constitution. The event was marked with a gun salute.

?The constitution promulgated today ... inaugurates a new era for our country,? Kabila said. ?Democratic Republic of Congo has crossed a determining phase towards the normalisation and the resolution of the eternal problem of the legitimacy of governors. From this moment on, nothing will delay the organisation of elections that are on the horizon (...) I now invite all political actors, for the sake of our people to respect the verdict of the ballot box.?

The new constitution, which marks the start of the country?s Third Republic and a hoped for milestone in its transition from war to a decentralised democratic state, takes immediate effect. But Kabila?s transitional government, which includes former rebels and political foes, will run the country until polls. Speculation is growing that parliamentary delays and the logistical nightmare of the first national democratic elections in 40 years will make meeting the June 30 deadline impossible. The transitional parliament is still discussing a delayed electoral law which the electoral commission says must be in place before it even sets the dates for polls.

President Thabo Mbeki of economic powerhouse South Africa and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, president neighbouring Republic of Congo and chairman of the African Union, attended the ceremony. Their presence highlights the international importance of peace in Congo ? the war at one point sucked in six foreign armies. ?The road is now clear for free and fair elections,? Sassou told reporters. ?The whole of Africa has supported the people of the DRC in their efforts to get over this crisis and move on from the transition.? Elections, seen as the cornerstone to peace deals that ended the five-year war that killed some four million people, mostly through hunger and disease, were initially due by mid 2005.

But that deadline slipped due to fighting in the east, rifts in the fragile government and the mammoth task of planning polls in a country the size of Western Europe which lacks basic infrastructure. That delay sparked violent protests. Congo?s constitution provides for a decentralised political system with provincial administrations responsible for local decision-making and controlling 40 percent of public funds.

It was accepted in a December referendum seen as a relatively successful test run for polls despite huge logistical challenges in transporting materials and collecting results. But the coming elections will see numerous candidates instead of a simple ?Yes? or ?No?, making ballot papers more complicated and the process more time-consuming.

A team of international diplomats following the transition, dubbed ?CIAT?, urged parliament on Friday to adopt the electoral law immediately and called for polls by the June 30 deadline. The president of the parliament said the law would be voted next week. European Union representatives, including European Development Commissioner, Louis Michel, also attended the ceremony. EU military planners are currently studying options of how they could help the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force safeguard elections in the state. The country?s new national flag features a yellow star in the upper-left corner on a blue background with a diagonal red stripe edged in yellow.

David LEWIS