Covetous Glances

To the shocked Belgians, it seemed a bitter reward for their promise of freedom next June 30 to the rich Congo colony.

No sooner had the painful independence pact been completed than the Congo's neighbors--Belgium's old friends--began making mysterious moves that seemed aimed at carving up the territory for their own benefit. First, France, which still controls much of the region along the Congo's northwestern border, began glancing covetously at the Lower Congo, the narrowing western edge around Leopoldville, which is the Congo's only outlet to the sea. Then, 1,500 miles inland, the British-controlled Rhodesian Federation was talking of annexing the Congo's Katanga province, which produces 60% of Congo wealth from a mineral-rich (copper, cobalt, diamonds, uranium) strip lying directly to the north of the Rhodesias.

Flushed and angry, Belgium's Foreign Minister Pierre Wigny rose in Brussels' Parliament chamber with a sharp official reply. France, he explained, had pulled out an almost forgotten agreement dating back to 1884, when the race for territory in Africa was hot, claiming it still had a "right of preference" on the Congo if Belgium should ever decide to dispose of territory in it. This, said Wigny indignantly, might have applied in the 19th century, "but today territories and their inhabitants are no longer goods that can be the object of international trade." In Paris, French officials sought to mollify the protesting Belgian ambassador: they were just pointing out the old agreement, not making something of it. But the Belgians were not easily reassured, for their Lower Congo is controlled by fire-breathing Congolese Politician Joseph Kasavubu, who for weeks has been demanding just what the French seem to want--that the region be allowed to stay out of an independent Congo and form a separate state, perhaps in league with the adjoining French-influenced Congo Republic. Kasavubu recently moved his family from Leopoldville across the river to Brazzaville, in old French territory, presumably to be closer to his old crony Abbe Fulbert Youlou, Premier of the French Congo Republic.

And then there was a pesky intrusion from Sir Roy Welensky, burly Prime Minister of the Rhodesian Federation, who gave an interview with a visiting London Daily Express reporter and chortled, "There's going to be hell because I told you this." Welensky's "this": he had been getting letters from the Katanga region, wanting to link up with Rhodesia "when the Congo gains its independence." Who sent the letters? Sir Roy would not say.

Obviously not Katanga's Africans, who are 98% of the population, and want no new white masters. A likelier bet would be that the big Rhodesian and British mining interests, which own substantial shares in Katanga's rich Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga mining group, and perhaps Belgian industrialists themselves, were behind it all. Welensky talks of fearing a blood bath and "rampant tribalism" on his northern frontier, would welcome a buffer state against African nationalism.

But Welensky's tactless remarks offend many Rhodesians "Unwarrantable interference in the internal affairs of another country," said Belgium, which hopes it can keep the colony together long enough to give it its independence.

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