Changing Course

After eight months of frustration and confusion, the U.S. was ready to start all over again in the Congo. The painful, expensive U.N. police effort had not quelled the hatreds or stilled the bloody violence. The new Kennedy Administration decided that it was time for a change.

State Department strategists have reluctantly concluded that President Joseph Kasavubu is too ineffectual to rally his nation behind him. The earnest Colonel (now Major General) Joseph Mobutu, on whom the U.S. once pinned its hopes, has turned out to be erratic, unreliable, and one of the weakest strongmen who ever stumbled into power. Wild-eyed Patrice Lumumba, though clubbed by his foes and languishing in jail, disconcertingly continued to command wide loyalty, not only among the Congolese, but also among other African leaders as well. Since Lumumba refused to disappear politically, U.S. strategists concluded that he could no longer be ignored. Last week, after summoning U.S. Ambassador Clare Timberlake for urgent consultations, Washington seemed prepared to throw its weight behind a sweeping new proposal of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold.

Opening the Jails. As a first step, Hammarskjold proposed to disarm all the Congolese troops. This would mean disarming not only Mobutu's central Congo army, but also the army of Katanga's Moise Tshombe and the Lumumbaist rebels in Eastern and Kivu provinces; perhaps overoptimistically, Hammarskjold hoped they could be induced to stack arms and retire to training camps. Next, the scattered legislators of the Congo's Parliament would be brought together to form a new government under U.N. supervision. The U.N. would ask all factions to free all political prisoners, a step which admittedly would put Lumumba back in politics--and perhaps in power. U.S. hope was that enough legislators had been disillusioned by Lumumba's behavior to install a moderate in his place. In any case, the U.S. was thinking in terms of a new federal structure in which the central government would not rule supreme.

Already Hammarskjold had approached India to supervise the disarming of the Congolese troops, and he hoped to win support for his plan from Ghana, Nigeria and other African nations. But would the squabbling faction leaders go along? Exploded General Mobutu: "We will never allow it. The U.N. is playing with fire.

This would mean war!" And there was no evidence that Tshombe would volunteer to let Lumumba out of his jail.

Bombs & Bullets. Whatever the obstacles, it was none too soon for a break in the bloody Congo deadlock. The U.N. force was losing troops; last week the U.A.R.'s 510-man unit and Guinea's 750 soldiers went home. Massive civil war was in the offing. A battalion of Mobutu's troops had driven deep into Eastern province in an effort to smash the pro-Lumumba forces of Antoine Gizenga in Stanleyville. Gizenga's own troops launched new forays into Kasai province. Rampaging Lumum-baists in Kivu ambushed 200 U.N. Nigerian soldiers, provoking a pitched, daylong battle. In Katanga, Tshombe sent his Belgian-piloted airplanes to bomb the invaders of his province, killing none of the enemy but blasting innocent tribesmen and a missionary medical station.

Hammarskjold's new plan was full of dangerous risks. The major problem was how to prevent any further meddling by outsiders. The U.S. was prepared to admonish Belgium against contributing any more bombs, planes or pilots to Tshombe. But the real danger was Soviet Russia. Was Nikita Khrushchev sufficiently eager for warmer relations with the U.S. to agree to keep hands off in the Congo? Russia's first big grab had been halted last September. But, though Kasavubu and Mobutu had ordered the Russians out, the Russians have gone on clandestinely helping pro-Lumumba forces.

If Lumumba is released and regains power, who is to stop him from inviting the Russians back into the Congo, bearing arms, aid and advice? Could Hammarskjold's balky U.N. troops? From past experience, it seemed unlikely. Then the U.S. would be confronted by the very situation it sought to prevent--Soviet power firmly planted in the heart of Africa.

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