Uncertain Pact

Even for the surrealistic Congo, the scene seemed weird as the Congolese Central Government's Premier Cyrille Adoula sat down to negotiate with his archenemy, Katanga's Moise Tshombe. The meeting place itself was strange enough--a hospital waiting room at a United Nations military base. And how did the angry foes start their discussion of the embattled Congo's future? With a fond embrace, knee-slapping guffaws and a day of jokes and laughter.

Palaver over Parley. In Elisabethville, the bitter little two-week war was, for the moment, over; only the scattered shots of occasional snipers broke the temporary truce. The U.N. was in control, having achieved its "limited objective" as defined by U.S. Under Secretary of State George Ball: "Freedom of movement for the peace-keeping forces, without the daily, bloody harassment by local Katanga troops, whipped into excited and irresponsible action by rumor, radio and beer." After that, it became the task of hard-working U.S. Ambassador Edmund Gullion to corral Tshombe, who had fled to the Northern Rhodesia border, and bring him face to face with Adoula. Guaranteed safe passage, Tshombe agreed to fly--in President Eisenhower's old Columbine III--to the meeting in Kitona, a sweltering settlement near the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic.

"Hello, you old rascal," Tshombe grinned, shaking hands with Adoula in the second-floor waiting room of the Kitona hospital. "How've you been?" replied Adoula as he hugged his old adversary and escorted him into the troops' mess for some food and reminiscences.

The U.N. had hoped the serious talks could start at once, but both sides were clearly determined to conduct things in the traditional Congolese way--lots of genial palaver as a preliminary buildup. In the afternoon, Tshombe napped in a high, hard hospital bed, while Adoula and several members of his delegation took a sightseeing tour along the cliffs over the Congo estuary. "That night the friendly palaver continued over beer, dinner, and lots of jokes about each other's misdeeds. Then they all went to bed, agreeing to get down to business next morning.

Flat Refusal. Gullion, with U.N. Un der Secretary Ralph Bunche and his top U.N. advisers, waited anxiously outside as the two delegations finally took their places around three simple green-topped tables. Now the jesting was over; loud voices could be heard in the corridor out side as Adoula made his demands that secessionist Katanga accept Leopoldville's control without qualification. At 3 p.m. the conferees ordered in beer and sandwiches, kept talking while they ate. At 8:30 p.m. came the call for more food, and this time some whisky. It now appeared that Tshombe was flatly refusing to commit his Katanga province to the Congo's Belgian-drafted provisional constitution, the Loi Fondamentale.

Just before midnight, the doors burst open and Adoula charged out, muttering angrily at Tshombe's intransigence. There was, he huffed, no point in continuing. Tshombe agreed, and ordered his plane made ready for the trip home.

Aghast, Gullion tugged at Tshombe's sleeve, implored him to keep talking; the alternative, he pointed out. might well be Tshombe's own destruction, for the U.N. force that now controlled Elisabethville, Tshombe's Katanga stronghold, would never hand back the city unless agreement was reached. Ralph Bunche buttonholed both sides; two other key U.N. officials--Ghana's Robert Gardiner and Tunisia's Mahmoud Khiari--feverishly suggested possible new formulas for compromise.

One Last Meeting. Finally, at 2 a.m., as the baggage of both the Adoula and Tshombe delegations was being loaded onto their planes, the two sides wearily agreed to sit down for one last session. An hour later. Adoula came out to announce agreement; later his Information Minister read out the eight-point declaration that he said Tshombe had signed on Katanga's behalf. It included not only acceptance of the Loi Fondamentale, but recognition of the need of a unified Congo, and a promise to hand over control of Katanga's gendarmerie to Adoula's regime. Tshombe even promised to respect the U.N. resolutions he had been cursing for weeks.

But Tshombe had agreed to most of these things on previous occasions; each time he had reneged when he got back home to Katanga. Would he do so again?

He obviously planned to try; already he was grumbling about Gullion's intervention, even though Tshombe himself originally requested it. And hardly had .the wily Moise returned to Elisabethville when he declared that he had "not found anything" at Kitona. In any case, said Moise, "I am only the mouthpiece of my people. It is for them to decide"--adding darkly, "The accord we have reached has to be ratified by my ministers and by the National Assembly [ Katanga's legislature], and that cannot be done for at least ten days."

This was the old runaround, and neither the Leopoldville regime nor the U.N. was willing to fall for it again. "We have been duped before," huffed the Central Government's Information Minister Joseph Ileo. "We do not want to be duped again." The U.N. was more specific about the binding effect of the pact. "There is no question of ratification." announced a U.N. spokesman grimly. "As far as we are concerned, it is signed, sealed and delivered."

The U.N. was determined to back its stand with force. In the agreement. Tshombe had promised to send Katanga Deputies to the Congolese national Parliament by Dec. 27 to start the reunification of Katanga with the rest of the country; if Tshombe did not live up to his pledge, the U.N.'s 6,000 Indian, Ethiopian, Swedish and Irish soldiers around Elisabethville might well resume their hail of shells, rockets and machine-gun fire. When one of Tshombe's platoons last week clashed with a group of Ethiopian soldiers who occupied the big Union Miniere copper refinery at nearby Lubumbashi, the Ethiopians fought so bitterly that the ground was littered with Katangese dead as the survivors retreated in disorder.

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