Round 3?

The sound of Christmas in Katanga province was the thunk of mortar shells and the rattle of machine guns. After an uneasy twelve-month truce between U.N. forces and the troops of Katanga's Secessionist Moise Tshombe, a few minor incidents got out of hand, and for the third time since September 1961 the province was in turmoil. Blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers swarmed through Elisabethville, seized roadblocks on the highways. Swedish U.N. Saab jets swooped low over Katanga's airfield at Kolwezi, destroying four planes on the ground and setting oil tanks ablaze. In the first skirmishes, seven U.N. soldiers were dead.

The fighting began with what Elisabethville residents call "L'Affaire Simba"--a reference to Simba beer, the local brew that both sides guzzled on and off duty. As the U.N. told it, boozed-up Katangese gendarmes suddenly opened fire on a detachment of Ethiopian U.N. troops in suburban Lubumbashi. As Tshombe described matters, a few tipsy Ethiopians started the shooting by scrambling atop a 200-ft. slag heap outside the big Union Miniere plant and taking potshots at the Katangese.

Fireworks Next. In any case, Katangese soldiers at a golf course on the outskirts of Elisabethville took the occasion to shoot down an unarmed U.N. helicopter moving overhead. They stoned the six surviving crewmen, pummeled them with rifle butts; a 23-year-old Sikh lieutenant, who lay helpless with a machine gun slug in the abdomen, died unattended in three hours. Indian Brigadier Reginald Noronha, commander of U.N. troops in Katanga's capital, was furious. "This is the last time," he said. "Next time there are going to be fireworks."

Noronha did not have long to wait. Three days later an Ethiopian guard fired a warning shot at a Katangese soldier who was approaching his post. Unhurt, the Katangese rolled down a hill in search of cover, but his comrades thought he had been hit and opened fire. Soon U.N. positions around the city were under attack. Tshombe "agreed"' to a ceasefire, but his 20,000 men kept right on fighting. "They are mad," said a Red Cross official who saw them rampaging through a township, firing at anything that moved. "They are killing their own men."

The U.N. claimed Tshombe had lost control of his men--which gave it an excuse to strike back. From Manhattan U.N. headquarters, orders were flashed to the 12,000-man U.N. force in Katanga: "Take all necessary action in self-defense and to restore order." Spearheaded by 5,700 tough, bitter Gurkhas, the U.N. force methodically swept disorganized Katangese troops from their guardposts on the road to Northern Rhodesia. Power lines fell in the fray, leaving shabby little Elisabethville (pop. 180,000) without light, water or phones.

Spears & Arrows. Noronha demanded once more that Tshombe call a cease fire, warned that unless he complied in 30 minutes, "a general war will begin." Tshombe rejected the ultimatum, and the U.N. went over to an all-out air and ground offensive. The Indian brigade stormed and captured the headquarters of Katanga's gendarmerie at Karavia, a mile from Elisabethville, with little resistance. Another column of troops advanced northwest toward Jadotville, in the heart of the copper belt that gives Tshombe $40 million a year in revenues. U.N. forces announced that they had taken over Elisabethville's post office, radio station and railway depot and had occupied Tshombe's palace.

At the height of the shooting, Tshombe vanished into hiding, but he was not calling it quits. "Everywhere, the U.N. and its troops will be fought with traps, with poisoned arrows and spears," he said in an angry statement through one of his aides. "We will resist by all means, including the total destruction of all our economic potential."

Was this the final showdown in the U.N.'s 2 1/2-year attempt to end Katanga's secession from the Congo? U.N. spokesmen insisted that it was not, but Secretary-General U Thant says he is convinced that unless Tshombe is subdued soon. Premier Cyrille Adoula's Central Government in Leopoldville will collapse. The U.S. agrees, and the State Department recently has been talking up the imminent danger of a leftist, Soviet-backed takeover in Leopoldville. But the British, who see Katanga as a stable buffer for the Rhodesias, warned against the "futility of trying to impose a political settlement by force." The French, who. like the British, have heavy investments in the Union Miniere, want hands off, and in Brussels, 200 Belgians demonstrated their feelings by marching on the U.S. embassy shouting, ''Down with Kennedy!"

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