Tea & Harmony

It was almost as wacky as the Mad Hatter's outdoor tea party in Wonderland. Smack in the middle of a mud-fouled road at Pumpi, 40 miles from Secessionist Moise Tshombe's last-ditch headquarters at Kolwezi, United Nations Brigadier Reginald Noronha set up four folding tables and laid out tea, peanut-butter sandwiches, coffee and Simba beer. At 9 a.m.. right on schedule, four Katanga province officials and three representatives of the Union Miniere mining outfit roared up in two autos. ''We have come to meet you as friends," declared one, and the party was on.

Despite the apparent absurdity of it. the Pumpi tea party was a dead serious affair arranged so that Tshombe could peacefully escort United Nations troops into Kolwezi. the last major objective in its drive to end Katanga's 2 1/2-year secession. Typically. Tshombe failed to show up at the party, but the operation went smoothly anyway. When the sandwiches were munched and the tea sipped. Noronha led a three-mile column of 1,000 Indian troops straight into Kolwezi.

Where were those proud Katangese defenders? Hundreds of gendarmes had fled into the bush before the blue-helmeted U.N. troops arrived. Some 75 white mercenaries, including a pistol-packing blonde ambulance driver known around town as Madame Yvette, had taken off for the Angolan border. But most of Tshombe's 2.000 bedraggled men paid heed to his plea to "cooperate with the U.N. and our Congolese brothers," dutifully stacked their arms at a nearby depot. At his yellow villa on the edge of Kolwezi, Tshombe greeted Noronha with a grin. "Nobody shot at you, I see," he cracked. Replied Noronha, throwing an arm around Tshombe's shoulders, "I have come to thank you for keeping your word."

Noronha was not the only one who was relieved that Tshombe was sticking to his promise to reintegrate Katanga with the rest of the Congo. At U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, Secretary-General U Thant could now turn to a problem that might turn out to be even tougher than ending Tshombe's secession. It was to establish the Congolese Central Government's authority over all the Congo and end the anarchy that still reigns in much of the nation.

As a starter, Thant appealed for $19 million to finance 1963 civilian operations in the Congo, estimated that at least 1,300 technical experts would be needed at once in the biggest aid program the U.N. has yet undertaken. The plan is to cut the U.N.'s 19,000-man army in the Congo by 50% as soon as possible--perhaps by late summer.

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