The experts met secretly in the center of Kinshasa, the six-million-strong capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In two confidential meetings, representatives from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) met with emissaries of the United States and the European Union to come up with the blueprint of a future government policies of Congo. No Congolese were invited to attend either meeting.

With the results of the country's historic election on July 30 still unannounced, people in Kinshasa and elsewhere are anxiously waiting for the electoral commission to release the outcome this weekend. Rumors and speculation are raising tensions as the various hostile camps on Congo's political scene wait impatiently.

But no matter who the winner turns out to be, the West already has plans for the new leaders of this strife-torn country devastated by dictatorship and war. Even before the new government in Kinshasa is formally installed, the European Union and the United States want to "condition" the most important political leaders, as diplomats put it. The plan is to confront the future rulers with a clear alternative: If they don't accept the West's guidelines, their financial support will be cut off.

The European Union and the United Nations have spend half a billion dollars so Congo could hold halfway democratic elections this summer. But corrupt militia leaders don't turn into honest rulers overnight, and so the wealthy donor countries want to take the political and economic reconstruction of the giant nation at the heart of Africa into their own hands -- at least for now.

An offer hard to refuse

Much as in Liberia and Mozambique, the new government in Congo will begin governing essentially as a Western protectorate. A group of Western experts, which wants to fix the finer points of its guidelines in September, has agreed on two main policy areas for now - "security" and "transparency in economic and government." The first priority is reforming the police and the army while building a justice system that observes its own laws, the experts agree. In today's Congo, policemen frequently set up roadblocks in order to extort money from drivers. Soldiers -- who are few and far between, and also badly paid -- have been known to go on looting sprees throughout the country. Judges can be bought.

The second key condition for a successful reconstruction of Congo is an efficient use of the funds. Every government contract, all aid money and every public expenditure will have to get the okay from Brussels and Washington. This means that the country's major economic project -- the construction of several hydroelectric plants meant to provide half of Africa with electricity and the Congo with billions of dollars in revenue -- will also be placed under Western supervision.

"Congo could be one of the wealthiest nations in the world," says Hans-Rudolf Hodel, the Swiss ambassador in Kinshasa. He begins citing figures on natural resources, tropical wood reserves and hydropower. He's right: Congo's territory contains almost 70 percent of the world's supply of coltan -- a metal ore used in mobile phone batteries -- about half of the world's cobalt, about a quarter of all industrial-grade diamonds and large reserves of gold, uranium and copper.

So far, the rights for extracting and exporting these resources were typically sold to American, Belgian and South African companies at prices far below value. Millions were transferred to the bank accounts of the Congolese warlords in return. But Congo's roughly 60 million inhabitants hardly benefited: regular state revenues were just $800 million in 2005. That's only about what a small Western European city usually takes in each year.

Fundamentally changing this will be a difficult balancing act. After all, yesterday's militia leaders are tomorrow's ruling politicians. Interim President Joseph Kabila commands about 15,000 men. The militia of his most dangerous opponent and one of his vice presidents, Jean-Pierre Bemba, is only slightly smaller.

Whoever becomes the Congo's next leader will have to make arrangements with his major rivals -- otherwise Congo faces the prospect of another civil war. But more is being asked of the country's politicians: They are to cede much of their power to Western experts.

Concern or condescension?

Like being Congo's foster parents," says Albrecht Conze, the political chief of the UN peacekeeping force, predicting the return of white patronage in a country that was a Belgian colony until 1960. "It won't be easy."

Support will come from a black "council of advisors" -- another idea hatched by Western governments. The plan is for well-known African politicians such as Joaquím Chissano, Mozambique's former president, and Nicéphore Soglo, his colleague from Benin, to make policies crafted overseas more palatable to Congo's citizens.