Despite his ruthlessness Mr Kagame is regarded as a steadying hand in a chaotic region.

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It is a chaotic and confusing region.

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Yet Katanga has enjoyed relative peace in recent years, in large part thanks to the province's popular governor Moise Katumbi, a billionaire Roman Abramovich-esque character who has regulated the region's previously chaotic natural mineral extraction and bankrolled TP Mazembe in the process.

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Chaotic Albania proper, with its northern region next to Kosovo barely under government control, could be sucked into the maelstrom.

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In its lack of fairness and openness, it marked a big step backwards for the region, comparable only to the chaotic contest in the Dominican Republic in 1994 and the notorious presidential election in Mexico in 1988.

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We are in very close contact with countries like Turkey and Jordan that immediately border Syria and have an impact -- and obviously Israel, which is having already grave concerns, as we do, about, for example, movements of chemical weapons that might occur in such a chaotic atmosphere and that could have an impact not just within Syria, but on the region as a whole.

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