Second Time Out

Scarcely a month ago, the Congo Republic's tiny army deposed President Alphonse Massamba-Debat, only to reinstate him 20 hours later when military leaders found no one with enough popular support to replace him. Last week the soldiers ousted the 47-year-old President again--this time, it seemed, for keeps.

The second showdown was predictable. The military, headed by its Commander in Chief, paratroop Captain Marien Ngouabi, had been steadily whittling away at Massamba-Debat's powers ever since his return to the presidential palace in Brazzaville on Aug. 4. The army's apparent aim was to steer the Congo from a leftist to a rightist tack. It abrogated the constitution, vested executive authority in a 40-member National Revolutionary Council headed by Ngouabi and re-established the premiership, a post that the President had abolished early this year.

Most important, the army tried to bring under its control the Jeunesse--the armed, Cuban-trained, extreme-left youth corps of Massamba-Debat's ruling political party. Persuasion proved ineffective, however, and Captain Ngouabi finally decided to use force. Fighting broke out around the Meteo camp, a Jeunesse training installation just outside Brazzaville, where about 300 Jeunesse members, some children, were entrenched. Among them were Massamba-Debat's younger brother and at least one of his most trusted lieutenants, both leftists and former Ministers whose ar rest the army had ordered. The battle, involving machine guns, bazookas and mortars, raged for two days. When the camp was finally captured by the army, bulldozers rattled in to plough under the dead, some in the very trenches from which they had fought. Casualty estimates ranged up to 100 dead.

Suspect Supplies. In the midst of the battle, Massamba-Debat made a Brazzaville radio appeal to the Jeunesse to lay down their arms. As far as Ngouabi was concerned, the appeal came too late. The President, he said, had failed to preserve unity. He announced Massamba-Debat's resignation and the formation of a provisional government. Ngouabi hinted that Massamba-Debat had incited the Jeunesse in an effort to regain his lost powers. As proof, the military charged that the Jeunesse were equipped with Chinese-made automatic weapons that could have reached them only with the connivance of the President.

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