Looking thin and drawn after undergoing prostate cancer surgery in Switzerland, Mobutu was greeted by enormous crowds after he abbreviated his convalescence on the French Riviera to return home to deal with a rebellion that threatens to cleave his country.

Members of his ruling party resorted to extraordinary measures to give their president a hero's welcome. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the motorcade route - many among them attracted by beer or small cash handouts.

Others were simply curious to view the national father figure who has been out of the country for four months - and had spent less than a day in the capital in the last two years. They saw a strikingly regal figure: Mobutu wore his trademark leopard skin hat, heavy tortoise-shell glasses, and a handsome tan-and-black floral print jacket. He clutched a silver-tipped ebony cane and waved grandly as he stood through the sunroof of his Cadillac stretch limousine.

Everyone strained to see the great man: high-strutting military brass bands, school cheerleaders, traditional dancers, ruling party functionaries, and tribal leaders - the men in three-piece suits and the women in grass skirts and necklaces made from leopard teeth and snake heads.

``With God's blessing and with the support of each of you, we are sure of final victory," Mobutu, 66, told the crowds, referring to a rebel uprising in eastern Zaire.

Mobutu's manic motorcade traveled a route through Kinshasa that had been transformed overnight, masking evidence of a nation impoverished by a bankrupt government that has virtually ceased to function.

Workers had cut the knee-high grass along the route and patched potholes, a major accomplishment. Most streets in this sprawling city of five million have been neglected so long that they have become undulating lanes of dust and trash connecting small islands of asphalt.

Reactions to Mobutu's return ranged from ecstasy to disdain. While some faulted him for failing to crush the rebels, others suggested that his mere presence would cause the rebellion to melt away. Others said they expected Zaire's currency to strengthen, corruption to end, and the economy to be restored.

``Now that the father is back, the price of beer may go down!" shouted one man hanging to the back of a minibus.

That is unlikely. Inflation is running at 800 percent, and a bottle of beer costs more than a teacher's official monthly salary.

At an evening rally at his two-story gray stucco house overlooking the vast Zaire River, Mobutu was vague about what he planned to do to address the nation's crushing problems. Chief among them is the turmoil along the Rwandan border, where the rebellion is under way and hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees remain on the run. An estimated half-million more crossed into Rwanda last month.

In a nationally broadcast address, delivered in French from the veranda of his house, Mobutu called the rebellion a ``grave situation that threatens the integrity and survival of Zaire."

`I WILL NOT RETREAT' ``Every time the country has been threatened in the past, I have not retreated," he said. ``I will not retreat this time."

Mobutu said he would work toward a democratic transformation, which he has been promising for the last six years; diplomats say reforms are essential to restoring the support of the international community. But Mobutu did not specifically promise to hold elections, tentatively scheduled for next year.

``I'm not going to disappoint you," was all he said. ``I know your expectations and your hopes."

The extravagant homecoming befitted a man who, in a 1971 campaign to ``authenticate" Zaire by replacing European names with African names, gave himself the name Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga. It means, among other things: ``All Powerful Warrior Who, Because of His Endurance and His Inflexible Will to Win, Goes From Conquests Leaving Fire in His Wake." He has ruled longer than any other living African leader.

Despite a reputation for looting his country into insolvency, Mobutu is still regarded as the only national figure with the stature to keep this vast country from breaking apart. Zaire has about 45 million people from 250 ethnic groups living in an area four times the size of Texas.

SUPPORTERS REMAIN 

``He is the father," said Mbanzu Malia, a member of a development agency from Mobutu's home province. ``At the moment he is the president, which means he has the key to the solution to the rebellion."

Mobutu, who has skillfully controlled Zaire by pitting opposition groups against one another since seizing power in a 1965 coup, is now shunned by Western powers who no longer need the help he provided during the Cold War.

He allowed Zaire to be used as a base for Jonas Savimbi, Washington's ally in a civil war against the Cuban-backed government in neighboring Angola. France and Belgium have twice sent troops to save Mobutu's government from rebellions.

But the West has kept Mobutu at arm's length in recent years, when he has impeded progress toward holding elections. He and his cronies cannot get visas to travel to the United States, and the U.S. government has suspended aid to Zaire, except that which supports elections.

Mobutu's international relations thawed slightly after the Rwandan crisis in 1994. He provided bases in eastern Zaire for international humanitarian groups to feed more than one million Hutu refugees who fled to Zaire to avoid retribution for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

But Zaire is now paying the price for the refugee crisis; the rebellion is a response, in part, to the presence of so many refugees inside Zaire.

The humiliation of the Zairean military at the hands of the rebels was mentioned often by people who greeted Mobutu yesterday. Many expressed hope that Mobutu would restore morale to the army, which is frequently unpaid and whose commanders have sold off much of its weapons and ammunition.

Many people in the crowd denounced rebel leader Laurent Kabila, whose forces have seized a strip along the border.

``We are not afraid of Kabila now that Mobutu is back!" sang one group of dancing women along the motorcade route.

``Mobutu is the solution," read several signs held by loyalists who waited for Mobutu's entourage to arrive in three aircraft, including a cargo plane reportedly loaded with refrigerators, televisions and video recorders bought in Europe by Mobutu's associates.

At the airport, pro-Mobutu political parties handed out hundreds of wildly colored shirts and dresses made with fabric printed with Mobutu's likeness and bearing such sayings as ``Elder Brother, You Are Above All the Others."

A cacophony of musicians offered competing performances: conga drum groups, high-strutting military brass bands, and gyrating dance corps sponsored by Coca-Cola and other corporate donors.