Friday, Feb. 03, 1961

Blow to the U.N.

The U.N. effort in the Congo was teetering on the edge of disaster.

By drawing his 20,000-man force largely from African and uncommitted Asian nations, Dag Hammarskjold had staved off the major calamity of a confrontation of the great powers in the Congo. But Hammarskjold had not reckoned with the meddling and intrigues of some of Africa's ambitious new leaders. Chief meddlers were Cairo's Nasser, Ghana's Nkrumah and Guinea's Sekou Toure, all of whom were working earnestly for Lumumba's return. In recent weeks, their troops have been openly taking sides in the Congo's internal squabble. The U.A.R.'s 510-man U.N. unit covertly assisted the pro-Lumumba forces that have taken over Eastern province and its Stanleyville capital. The U.N. troops of Guinea and Ghana obviously have been taking orders from their pro-Lumumba bosses back home. In the separatist province of Katanga, the U.N. Moroccan troops were under instructions from Rabat not to fire on anti-Tshombe forces.

Last week the U.N. force was subjected to the worst threat yet. The U.A.R., Guinea and Morocco announced that they were withdrawing most of their troops, and Indonesia declared that it was also pulling out its 1,145 men. Overall, this meant a loss of one-fourth of the U.N.'s manpower. The withdrawals would clearly favor the pro-Lumumba rebels already in control of more than 30% of northern and eastern Congo, and anxious to extend their influence once the U.N. roadblocks disappear. In Stanleyville, Antoine Gizenga's pro-Lumumba forces held 300 hostages, prepared to shoot them if Lumumba should die in his Katanga jail; Gizenga now was getting regular arms shipments from Cairo, trucked in overland via the Sudan. To the south, Lumumbaman Anicet Kashamura clung to Kivu province, where his troops stole cars and gasoline from white businessmen. Eight hapless Belgian soldiers, captured after they had wandered across the border from the protectorate of Ruanda-Urundi, were forced to kneel and submit to public beating (see cut).

In Manhattan, the U.N.'s Hammarskjold sent cable after cable pleading for troop contributions from Mexico, Iraq, Iran and India, but got solid pledges from nobody. The new U.N. Congo Commander, Ireland's Lieut. General Sean McKeown, warned that the present 20,000-man force was the "bare minimum requirement" to prevent civil war. At week's end Hammarskjold gloomily informed the Security Council that unless replacement troops were forthcoming, he might have to propose "liquidation of the force, and in consequence, the entire United Nations Congo operation."

As the Congo situation worsened, the U.S. was grimly aware that present U.N. policies seemed to be promoting neither Western interests nor Congolese peace. But the U.S. has loyally done what it could, and obliged whenever its help was asked. Last week President Kennedy announced that the U.S. was rushing rice, corn, dried milk and other foodstuffs from U.S. surplus stocks to help feed 300,000 homeless Baluba tribesmen starving in remote Kasai province. Orders crackled from U.S. Air Force European headquarters in Wiesbaden, and an urgent airlift headed south. U.S. planes stopped at Nairobi, Salisbury and the Cameroun city of Garoua, picked up food pledged by other governments. On the way back, the planes would help haul out the Moroccan, U.A.R. and Guinean troops that the dissident politicians of Africa had ordered home.

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