The Katanga Tangle-Two Articles:

...And this tension was, at the very least, to contribute to the start of a third round of fighting...

...Attempts by President Moise Tshombe and UN officials to reach a cease-fire were to no avail...

...This may have been a practical error, but once having recognized him as the rightful provincial leader, both the Central Government and the UN had no choice but to "negotiate" with him...

...In any case, the political vacuum in Katanga has to be filled and Tshombe, sensing complete disaster, may now be more inclined to cooperate...

...Actually, as was made known a day later, Tshombe was never under house arrest and his so-called cooperation with the UN is, as this is being written, still a matter of doubt...

...on December 28, after enduring 18 hours of almost continual pounding from the Katangese, the UN struck back...

...The Security Council and General Assembly mandates establishing the framework for UN operations in the Congo are now outdated, and the lack of new guidelines for the Secretary General has created a great deal of confusion over what course of action the UN should take in a particular situation...

...Ralph Bunche, UN Under Secretary for Special Political Affairs and the Secretary General's adviser on the Congo, had ordered the Leopoldville command to freeze operations seven miles from Jadotville...

...And for the past two-and-a-half years, Tshombe has proved to be an elusive negotiator, refusing to implement in practice agreements he has signed in principle...

...At this point, certainly, UN withdrawal would only bring additional disaster to the country...

...The situation on December 28 was perhaps best summed up by G. C. Senn, the Swiss International Red Cross representative who had just come from the battle area...

...The confusion created by "breaks in communication" has often been compounded by incorrect or exaggerated UN reports to the press that completely distort the actual facts...

...Both sides were fully aware that if the UN did try to assert freedom of movement the Katangese would resist and the third round of fighting would be under way...

...The choice in this will undoubtedly fall partly to the UN, partly to the Central Government and least of all to the Katangese themselves...

...The African countries, many of which are themselves artificial creations that cut across tribal and religious lines and other traditional affiliations, have already endorsed the UN's efforts to curb the centrifugal forces in Katanga...

...His companions were sure he had been hit by the Ethiopian shot, and they immediately opened fire...

...UN spokesmen assured newsmen that their forces had not fired a single shot until the order came to move out at 4 p.m...

...On the evening of the next day, December 27, there was concerted machine gun and mortar firing from all Katangese positions circling the city...

...Did Tshombe himself want it...

...At the nearby Lubumbashi road block, Katangese soldiers started shooting at a UN position a few hundred feet away...

...Involved in his decision were non-military considerations of no immediate interest to the commanders in the field...

...Even so, it was only after the Belgian Parliament amended the Congo's Loi Fondamentale to suit Tshombe's needs that he was able to be elected President...

...About two weeks ago, for instance, UN spokesmen in New York circulated the report that Tshombe had been placed under "house arrest" in his Presidential Palace in Elisabethville, and was later freed when he agreed to "cooperate" with the UN...

...Soldiers at many outposts apparently felt quite early in the shooting that the danger point had been reached...

...Political unification, however, cannot be imposed by force—no matter if applied by the UN or the Central Government—because if it is, it will have to be sustained by force...

...however, finding the means to implement it with a semblance of constitutionality and legality presents new problems...

...without it, the very existence of other independent African nations is threatened...

...Christmas was quiet, but on the following day there was sporadic shooting at several road blocks...

...No one was hurt, but the sound of the firing set off a chain reaction...

...No one had told the Ethiopians about the beer break...

...They are completely out of control...

...Darius S. Jhabvala, a new contributor to these pages, covers the UN for the New York Herald-Tribune...

...Thus, the burden for the "transfer" has fallen squarely on the United Nations—something for which the world body was never prepared...

...The gendarmes are absolutely mad,' he said...

...To make certain that nothing was up, they fired a warning burst into the air...

...One group accepted the secession as a fait accompli and busied itself with enlisting support against the UN's "actions against Katangese self-determination...

...Later in the day a UN helicopter was shot down: An Indian officer was killed and four crewmen were beaten up before being returned to the UN...

...To the outside world, of course, Tshombe claimed that the UN was totally responsible for the initial outbreak of firing...

...The question remains, however, why the Katangese began the firing and kept it up as long as they did...

...At one point, when the firing was unusually intense from the Katanga side, Tshombe ducked and started to back away...

...Although the order was transmitted to Brigadier Reginald Noronha, he took Jadotville after signalling laconically that the ordered freeze was "militarily impossible...

...But this it nevertheless did all day December 28...

...This one hypothesizes that the firing on the night of December 27 began quite haphazardly and simply gathered momentum on its own— a momentum generated by pent-up tensions which had been building up to an explosive pitch in the preceding days...

...At this point, one of the gendarmes lost his footing, slipped and began sliding down the slagheap...

...Looking down from their post, the Ethiopians figured this might be a sneak assault...

...At 4 p.m...

...Tshombe, they feel, clearly appreciated the implications if the firing from his side continued unabated...

...Though the UN's ultimate objective in the Congo has never been spelled out in any Security Council or General Assembly mandate, most member nations would probably welcome Katanga's political integration under the Leopoldville Government...

...The diehards around Tshombe, so the reasoning goes, were unwilling to give up the secession and therefore decided to strike at the UN first...

...Despite Secretary General U Thant's assertion, as restated in his most recent letter to Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah, that the UN is not "in Katanga or elsewhere in the Congo, intervening in internal political affairs," the fact is that the UN's decisions and actions, overt or otherwise, are exercising decisive influence over the Congo's political future...

...In UN circles, such confusion is euphemistically labeled as "a break in communications...

...U Thant's National Reconciliation Plan is well known...

...He is expected to use this power to bargain for his own security and for retention of the provincial Presidency...

...Several pro-Tshombe Europeans, in fact, experienced a sense of relief when the UN finally and decisively swept the gendarmes away...

...It must be negotiated, this time perhaps strictly on the UN's terms, either again with Tshombe or with another regime that could effectively replace him and his cabinet...

...On the night of December 27, the Katangese definitely started shooting first in the golf course area and by early the next morning they were bombarding the UN with every weapon in their arsenal...

...For the past two-and-a-half years, the tacit, long-range objective of the United Nations—namely, to obtain national acquiescence to Leopoldville—has been consistently blocked by the secession ambitions of Katanga President Moise Tshombe and his 18,000-man gendarmerie, which is led by some 500 white mercenaries...

...To observers who were with them at the time, their answering fire was more than called for under the circumstances...

...Today few people would question Tshombe's right to be leader of the province...

...Despite great difficulties and frustrations, the UN Congo Command has effectively broken the back of Tshombe's resistance forces and established military supremacy throughout the country...

...Perhaps Tshombe's military men, particularly General Norbert Moke, had decided to start a war on their own, believing that by hitting out first they could beat the UN...

...But the problem of the UN's relations with Katanga and the Central Government has been considerably obscured by the propaganda of a number of special interest groups...

...For the simple fact is that Tshombe became a political entity during the disorders and lawlessness in the Congo in 1960, when the Central Government was powerless to prevent him from becoming President of Katanga...

...The Katangese felt that on January 15 the UN would exercise its Security Council resolution regarding freedom of movement in the province, unless by that date Katanga had put into effect the UN plan for reconciliation with Leopoldville...

...This, however, was not borne out by independent observers who lived in the shooting zone...

...Thus, on the morning of December 24, the Katangese started on their usual climb to the observation post, a bottle of beer in one hand and a rifle in the other...

...For a time all went well...

...Lloyd Garrison is the New York Times correspondent in the Congo...

...As one diplomat put it, both sides were not averse to a military showdown—but the timing was quite accidental...

...In Elisabethville By Lloyd Garrison Elisabethville The events leading to the third round of fighting between Katangese and United Nations forces were complicated, but in a sense the trouble had its roots in a mix-up over a beer party...

...There is, after all, some plausibility to this view...

...To many—including foes of the United Nations here—the UN's display of restraint, coupled with the gendarmes' persistence in keeping up their barrage, provided the world body with a legitimate pretext for taking the offensive...

...The slagheap incident, the firing at the road block, and the shooting down of the helicopter stirred feelings of high tension on both sides...

...And neither the Central Government nor the United Nations has ever challenged his legitimacy...

...The beer party in question took place every morning at 10, when a routine patrol of Katangese gendarmes would pause at the base of the Union Minière slagheap in Elisabethville and climb to the Tunisian observation post on top for a break...

...There is still another theory on why the fighting broke out...

...But to achieve the stability of the Congo as a whole, the UN's military success in Katanga must now be translated into a political one that will ultimately reunify the Congo and supplant UN authority with that of the Central Government...

...Whatever Tshombe's future, there can be no doubt that the UN will continue to influence the course of Congolese internal affairs...

...It kept up all that night and on into the next day...

...But the negotiations finally broke down when the UN felt obliged to reject Tshombe's plea for time to consult his ministers, who by then were scattered in all directions...

...As much as the UN may dislike him, Tshombe is still the logical man with whom to deal...

...Others have questioned Tshombe's legitimacy as provincial president, pointing to the bitterly contested Katanga elections of May 1960, when the Balubakat party polled a larger vote than Tshombe's Conakat group but gained fewer seats...

...The Secretary General's Plan of National Reconciliation provides ample proof of this...

...And credit for the military victory is due Brigadier Inder Jit Rikhye, the Secretary General's military adviser, whose brilliantly devised swagger-stick ploys prevented considerable bloodshed...

...The Tunisians were delighted to pay for the beer, and the gendarmes did not mind carrying it on the long climb up...

...General Prem Chand clutched his coat, held him upright and, over the din, shouted, "Now can you tell who is shooting...

...For them, unity means survival...

...It appeared needless for the UN to exaggerate its case for finally hitting back...

...Actually, UN troops on the spot were under orders not to fire back unless their positions were in danger of being overwhelmed...

...In both instances, Tshombe's word would be final...

...Tshombe himself was obliged to concede this privately to UN officials when he toured front-line outposts December 27 with Eliud Mathu, the UN civilian chief in Katanga, and General Dewan Prem Chand, the Indian commander of UN forces there...

...Then, the day before Christmas, the Tunisians were replaced by Ethiopian troops...

...Officials here have long hoped that when the UN realized its immediate objectives it would be able to extricate itself from further involvement in Congolese affairs...

...Moreover, there are two key items in the UN's reconciliation plan that can be implemented without bloodshed only by Tshombe: removal of the 500 mercenaries, and submission of the gendarmerie to the authority of Leopoldville...

...The Katanga Tangle -Two Articles At the UN By Darius S. Jhabvala United Nations The United Nations' efforts to reunify the Congo politically are fraught with dangers that seriously threaten the viability not only of that strife-torn area, but also of other newly independent nations in Africa...

...At present, though, while the UN's military authority could conceivably be taken over by Cyrille Adoula's regime, its political "authority" can only be replaced with the consent of the Katangese themselves...

...But the UN's decisive military victory in Katanga during the past four weeks has drastically reduced Tshombe's bargaining power and political strength, though he still retains his capacity for committing economic mischief through reckless reprisals —such as the destruction of the valuable Union Minière installations in Kolwezi...

...Or at least this incident serves as a starting point in understanding why hostilities began again...

...Those close to the cease-fire negotiations tend to be dubious...

...According to reports here, Dr...

...A good example was the capture of Jadotville...

...nor did the gendarmes know that the Tunisians had left...

...The immediate objectives of the UN Congo operations, however, have been achieved, and remarkably so considering the potentialities of the Katangese...