(3 of 10)
Lumumba's inability to cope with the raping and looting turmoil that immediately followed independence gave Tshombe the excuse he needed. On July 11, 1960, Katanga seceded on the pretext that it was the only way to prevent the disorders from spreading into" the province. Ever since, both the U.N. and the central government have tried to get Katanga back under the wing of Leopoldville. At the Coquilhatville Conference last April, Tshombe was put under house arrest, kept until he agreed to join the central parliament. But back home in Katanga, he reneged on his agreement. Tshombe continually defied U.N. orders to get rid of the Belgian and other white soldiers (see box, p. 20) who were his major support. Finally last August, U.N. troops began an ill-fated action to force Tshombe ,to end his secession—an action that ended in a humiliating cease-fire maintaining the status quo and in Dag Hammarskjold's fatal air crash.
Against this background of frustration and failure, the U.S. decided to back the U.N.'s latest move against Katanga, for all its undoubted risks. Last week Washington refused to go along with the demands of Britain and France for an immediate cease-fire at any cost. From the White House and the State Department came the line: No cease-fire until Tshombe agrees to negotiate a satisfactory settlement with Adoula. This did not 'mean that the U.S. wanted to destroy Moise Tshombe. He has a following and a talent for leadership too rare to dispense with. But to survive, insisted the U.S., he would have to use that talent for the Congo, not just Katanga. By week's end the U.N. was in the center of Elisabethville, and Tshombe reportedly had fled to the Rhodesian border.
But before these events, the world witnessed a week of untidy fighting and hasty diplomatic moves.
Toward a Summit. At midweek, sensing the imminent U.N. offensive, Tshombe put out peace feelers. To President Kennedy went a direct personal plea that "as a free man and as a Christian," he name a conciliator and stop the fighting. Kennedy wired back his prompt agreement and nominated his ambassador in Leopoldville, Edmund Asbury Gullion, to take on the task. But the U.N. pressure would not be relaxed unless Tshombe produced hard evidence of sincerity—in other words, until he left Elisabethville and met with Adoula.
Throughout all this, the Congo was a weird mixture of choler and calm. In Leopoldville. the central government's capital in the Congo River basin, life for most went on at its slow-motion pace in the sticky heat; but the Royale, the U.N.'s seven-story main Congo headquarters, was alive with activity. Aides scurried in and out of the office of burly Irish General Sean McKeown, chief of the U.N. Congo military force, who was busy reading reports on the fighting and firing off fresh orders to the air and ground commanders in Katanga itself, 1,000 miles away.