A New Start

For the troubled Congo, at last there was a measure of peace. The rival factions were neither shouting nor shooting. In fact, they had finally agreed to meet in Leopoldville so that Parliament could reconvene. "We are on the eve of national reconciliation," exulted a government spokesman on the Leopoldville radio.

Much of the credit went to the U.N.'s new Congo boss, Dr. Sture Linner, 44, the tall, mild Swede whose friendly new approach was working wonders with the Congolese central government. Unlike India's haughty Rajeshwar Dayal, Linner mixed freely with the Congolese. Said he: "We get along wonderfully well. I happen to like Africans." One result: after long, friendly talks with President Joseph Kasavubu, the U.N. chief was able to move his troops back into the Congo's main port of Matadi; only last March, angry Congolese infantrymen had blasted them out with mortars and machine guns.

New Tune. Linner dispatched his aide, Robert K. A. Gardiner, a Ghanaian by nationality, on a special mission to Stanleyville, where Antoine Gizenga holds sway over Eastern province and claims to be the only true heir of the late Patrice Lumumba. Gardiner persuaded Gizenga that it was safe to send a delegation to Leopoldville for the reopening of Parliament. In Katanga, the copper-rich secessionist province that stubbornly refused to share its wealth with the rest of the Congo, Linner's other U.N. emissary, Francis Nwokedi of Nigeria, was hard at work on the Deputies of stubborn "President" Moise Tshombe, who has been held as hostage in a villa near Leopoldville. Grumbling, the Katangans finally agreed to rejoin the central Parliament--on condition that Tshombe be freed.

The condition was quickly fulfilled. Calling the foreign press corps to his home, Premier Joseph Ileo produced the grinning prisoner in a striped charcoal-grey suit and green polka-dot tie. Tshombe promptly took the floor. After two months under guard, he seemed a changed man. Gone was his anger at his captors; gone, too, was all the talk of Katanga as a separate nation. "Katanga has always wanted to collaborate with the rest of its brethren in the Congo," he said, as if he had always felt that way. "Katanga is an industrial province. It needs customers. Building customs barriers would cut down the profits."

Major General Joseph Mobutu, the Congolese army commander who had kept him under lock and key, was now Tshombe's pal. Turning to Mobutu, Tshombe declared: "Because of men like him, the Congo crisis can now be ended. He is above them all, all, all, all." Then, of all things, Tshombe embraced Congolese Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko, who a few weeks ago accused him of high treason. "He was my worst enemy," grinned Moise. "Now he is my best friend." Back home in Katanga, Tshombe's aides glumly prepared to hand over their army to central Congolese government control, for that, too, was part of the deal.

The Deputies will meet in the 500-seat auditorium at Lovanium University, a cluster of modern buildings on a hilltop eight miles outside Leopoldville. To assure uninterrupted work, the Deputies will be kept on campus for the entire session. U.N. troops will prevent anyone from entering or leaving; all telephones to the university will be cut off; and the parliamentarians will be frisked to make sure that no one is carrying a gun or bringing in money for use as bribes on the crucial votes.

In the Congo, any scheme can explode into chaos overnight. But there was now hope that, left alone to work out their problems in their own way, at their own pace, the Congolese just might succeed in making a nation.

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