KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday adopted new national measurement standards based on the metric system aimed at bringing an end to decades of ambiguity, bartering, and chaos in the vast country, and paving the way for standardization of road maps 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 ten centimeter rulers as President Joseph Kabila signed into law the new resolution. The event was marked with a gun salute.

	DRC's esoteric system of measurements led to incidents such as this jet liner attempting an emergency landing on a driveway due to a conversion error

"The metric resolution promulgated today ... inaugurates a new era for our country," Kabila said. "No longer shall we sell petrol by the bucket, gallon, hogshead, or hands full."

Congo's former, Byzantine collection of weights and measurement included a distance measurement based on the length of the region's tribal chieftain's eldest child's right leg and liquid measurements based on the volume of the chief's cupped hands. 

"Democratic Republic of Congo has crossed a determining phase toward the normalization and the resolution of the eternal problem of the legitimacy of weights and volumes and measurements. From this moment on, nothing will delay the organization of international aid to assist us in weighing and measuring our country," he told the crowd at the heavily guarded ceremony.

"I now invite all people, regardless of mass, for the sake of our people to respect the verdict of the scale," he added. Democratic Republic of Congo's tax structure is based on an individual's Body Mass Index.