Word: congos
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Soft-spoken Premier Adoula, by far the ablest of the Congo's leaders, is as exasperated as anyone else at this state of affairs, but he is hamstrung by Leopoldville's nightmarish political mess, which forces him to spend 80% of his budget on salaries for civil servants and the 25,000-man army, which is vastly overpaid ($180 base pay per month for privates) to keep it loyal. To retain the support of the myriad political factions, he has 41 men in his Cabinet, perhaps the world's biggest...
...notably erratic Antoine Gizenga, who almost made Eastern Province a Communist preserve last year, and zany "King" Albert Kalonji of South Kasai. But Adoula still has not rid himself of the biggest headache of all, stubborn President Moise Tshombe of Katanga Province, who has a firm grip on the Congo's copper-rich southeast corner and refuses to share its $50 million annual revenue with the rest of the nation...
Gaining Repose. For months, Adoula and Tshombe have been negotiating bitterly in Leopoldville on schemes intended to bring Katanga back into the Congo. U.N. officials have pleaded, cajoled and threatened the two sides to find common ground for a deal. Wearily, Adoula offered repeated concessions, such as a revised constitution to give Katanga greater local autonomy in a federal Congo. But Tshombe wanted all or nothing: virtual independence for Katanga, his own gendarmery, and a corps of foreign mercenaries to run it. While he still would not agree to divvy up the copper profits with the Central government, Tshombe announced...
Shocked and bitter. Central Government Premier Adoula gestured toward the broad Congo waters outside his window as he told newsmen: "Gentlemen, six weeks of patient negotiations have just gone down the river...
Hints of Force. In Elisabethville, Tshombe blithely made plans to celebrate Katanga's own independence day-July 11, marking the date in 1960 when the province seceded. The U.N.'s Congo chief, patient Robert Gardiner, is increasingly exasperated at the deadlock, has dropped strong hints that his units will put down Tshombe and take over Katanga by force if the wily Moise breaks off negotiations entirely. In Manhattan the U.N.'s Acting Secretary-General U Thant declared that his Congo commanders "have been told to be very much on the alert...