The Mixture as Before

For a while at least, Moise Tshombe seemed willing to help put the Congo together again. When the United Nations gave him ten days to accept its latest unification plan or face economic sanctions, Katanga's secessionist President waited until the last minute, then announced fulsomely that he viewed the scheme "with enthusiasm." But mercurial Moise's zeal lasted only a few days. Last week he summoned newsmen to Elisabethville's Prince Leopold Hospital, led them into the mortuary and pointed a well-manicured finger at the bodies of two Katangese gendarmes. He claimed that they had been slain by 500 U.N. troops who attacked a Katanga roadblock. Bellowed Tshombe: "I do not believe in U Thant's good faith any longer, nor in the Western nations who guaranteed U Thant's plan." For Propaganda. Infuriated U.N. officials in Leopoldville accused Tshombe of deliberately staging the clash by ordering 100 Katanga gendarmes to encircle and attack a Jeep-borne patrol of 20--not 500--Gurkha troops. Though the U.N. commander admitted that "someone might have been hit," Acting Secretary-General U Thant's office in Manhattan called the incident "a cynical effort to gain a propaganda advantage." In any case, the U.N. was the loser. U Thant's plan would have forced Katanga to integrate its 12,000 soldiers with Congo forces and, still more important, to turn over half its rich mining revenues to Premier Cyrille Adoula's central government. Without Katanga, Adoula's regime faces the prospect of a restive army and ultimate bankruptcy.

"Points in Common." Nor was that the central government's only worry. Fifty miles outside Leopoldville, secessionist-minded Albert Kalonji, a self-styled "king" who takes his regal status so seriously that he once employed a proxy handshaker, escaped from Luzumu prison, where he was sent last April to serve a 2 1/2-year term for torturing political rivals. With Kalonji safely back in his diamond-rich stronghold of South Kasai, where he is protected by a private gendarmerie of 2.000, Leopoldville had reason to fear that he might emulate his friend Tshombe and once again attempt a pullout.

To those who had been through the whole weary plot before, it seemed that Tshombe's stall was on, and Thant's plan off. Or was it? Over the bodies of the two dead gendarmes, Tshombe thundered: "If the United Nations wants war, they can have it. It won't be child's play." Then, unpredictable as ever, he took to the air with a curiously conciliatory statement. "We have found a number of points in common with our Congolese friends," said Tshombe. "We may be near a definite solution of the Congo crisis."

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