Union for Democratic Renewal

In the second round of the 1992 presidential election Lissouba defeated Kolélas (Kolélas 38 percent, Lissouba more than 61 percent), and Kolélas became the leading opposition figure. The URD already existed as a seven-party alliance immediately after the 1992 parliamentary election.

Immediately after the June–July 1992 parliamentary election, the seven URD parties held 40 of the 125 seats in the National Assembly; UPADS had come first with 39 seats and the MCDDI second with 29. When Pascal Lissouba gave the PCT only three portfolios in a 28-member government in September, although the PCT had wanted a third of the posts, the PCT broke with Lissouba and instead allied with the URD. That defection cost Lissouba his majority: on 24 September the opposition majority elected the PCT's André Muelle as president of the National Assembly, and on 30 September the PCT and the URD concluded a formal alliance.

On 31 October the opposition majority rejected Lissouba's appointed prime minister, Bongho-Nouarra, in a vote of no confidence and demanded that, under the constitution, a new prime minister be drawn from the majority; Lissouba instead dissolved the National Assembly on 17 November and called fresh elections. Three people died as the ensuing popular protests were put down, and army (FAC) mediation produced an agreement among the political forces on 3 December 1992, forming Claude-Antoine Da-Costa's government of national unity. The URD and PCT took 60 percent of its posts (the Da-Costa "60/40" government), and an independent committee, CONOSELA, headed by Martin M'Bemba of the URD-PCT, prepared the early elections.

When the first round of the early elections in May 1993 produced a runoff favourable to the presidential camp, the URD-PCT alleged fraud, refused to take part in the second round, demanded a rerun of the first and called for civil disobedience. The dispute led to the 1993–1994 First Congo Civil War, in which Kolélas's Ninjas and Sassou Nguesso's Cobras generally fought Lissouba's Cocoyes (the alliances were not strict). The war lasted from 2 November 1993 to 30 January 1994; official figures record about 2,000 dead, 100,000 to 300,000 displaced and 13,000 houses destroyed. During the war Lissouba declared a state of emergency on 16 July 1993, and mediation by Gabon's Omar Bongo and the OAU envoy Mohamed Sahnoun produced the Libreville agreement of 4 August, with the state of emergency lifted on 15 August. In the end, political agreement and international legal arbitration left the presidential camp victorious in the electoral contest.

The URD and its largest party, the MCDDI, were rooted in the Pool region, Kolélas's home area. In the civil war Kolélas's Ninja militia, made up mainly of Bakongo, committed looting, destruction and killings in the Pool region and in the Bakongo and Makélékélé districts of Brazzaville, while militias of the Lissouba camp did the same in the Niari, Lékoumou and Bouenza regions and in the Mpila and Diata districts of Brazzaville.

From 1994 Kolélas reconciled with Lissouba, and the URD supplied four ministers to the government of Prime Minister Yhombi-Opango announced on 23 January 1995: Colonel Philippe Bikinkita took the interior portfolio for security and urban development, and three others served as minister-delegates. Its member parties included the Rally for Social Democracy and Progress (RDPS), the National Party (PANA), the Patriotic Union for Democratic Progress (UPDP) and the Congolese Social Democratic Party (PSDC). French Wikipedia describes Kolélas as heading the URD throughout a 1992–1997 phase, so 1993 cannot be treated as a dissolution year. The last phase of URD activity documented in the sources is nevertheless 1993, and no source states a dissolution date.