Mission to Addis

Foreign ministers of the 34-nation Organization of African Unity met in Addis Ababa last week to ponder "an African solution" to the agonizing Congo rebellion. The session had been called at the request of the Congo, whose controversial Premier Moise Tshombe had come under heavy attack for hiring white mercenary troops--but found himself unable to contain the rebel advances without outside help of some sort. What Tshombe wanted was African troops for police duty in pacified areas in order to free his own harried Congolese army to fight the rebels. As he told the delegates: "Such an arrangement would allow me to dispense with the services of those whose presence in the Congo is embarrassing us."

Clawless Cat. The assembly turned out to be most reluctant to fulfill his request. Most delegates, in fact, had come to Addis Ababa convinced that Tshombe was a traitor to Africa's cause, and that the Congo's crisis was essentially an ideological battle between patriots and traitors. Not so, declared Tshombe during five days of debate, insisting that the real problem was the complete breakdown of law and order that followed the Belgian departure in 1960--which the Communists have been able to turn to their advantage.

Wisely, Tshombe avoided his usual histrionics, answered the stream of criticism with patient restraint. He was, as one delegate put it, "a cat in hell without claws." So successfully did he make his case that even such violent critics as Ghana ended up supporting him, and the foreign minister of his bitter enemy, the neighboring Brazzaville Congo, was moved to offer Tshombe his hand and praise his "African sense."

However warmly the session ended, it produced no concrete results. The O.A.U. rejected Tshombe's request for troops, created instead a rather meaningless ten-nation commission to "help and encourage" him in restoring unity. It also ordered Tshombe to expel the mercenaries "as soon as possible"-which in African terms means when ever he feels like it.

Jittery Boss. Encouraged, Tshombe flew back home, where the rebels of Stanleyville, as if to prove his thesis, had declared a new "Congolese People's Republic." Its President would be Christophe Gbenye, 37, a jittery, opportunistic onetime Congolese police boss who once labored for Leftist Antoine Gizenga, then arrested Gizenga on behalf of Moderate Premier Cyrille

Adoula, then helped lead a Tshombe-backed plot to grab the eastern Congo. Rebellion was nothing new in the Congo, but the latest turn in Stanleyville brought French Ambassador Jacques Koscziusko-Morizet hurrying back to Leopoldville from consultations in Paris. Asked by his chauffeur why he had returned so soon, the ambassador shrugged, "Because of the situation." The chauffeur nodded sympathetically. "Things are pretty bad in Paris?" he asked.

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