Word: dag
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Louder & Louder. While his blue-helmeted men stood bored guard duty on sweltering street corners and dusty village lanes. Dag Hammarskjold dickered endlessly with the Congo's erratic politicians. Encouraged by the mercurial remarks of Premier Patrice Lumumba as he wended his way home from the U.S., the Congo government became more and more insistent on the departure of Belgian troops from their bastion in Katanga...
...Belgium with a blunt appeal: Remove your forces from Katanga so the U.N. can take over. Within hours, the envoy flashed back word of Belgian acceptance and Hammarskjold happily went on the air with an announcement that U.N. troops would move into Katanga at week's end. Dag then sent the U.S.'s Ralph Bunche flying off to the Katanga capital of Elisabethville as his advance emissary...
...while Congo government ministers jubilantly feted Dag, enraged Moise Tshombe called for "total mobilization," declared: "Katanga is independent, and will remain independent. The U.N. has no more right than any other country to enter our territory against its will." In Elisabethville and other Katanga towns, volunteers and recruits lined up by the hundreds to join Katanga's "army," and Tshombe's aides sent light planes to drop leaflets over the countryside, urging Katangans to prepare for war. There were no visible signs of Belgian pressure on Tshombe to give...
...Congo confederation. But he had one strong card. Hammarskjold's mandate from the U.N. members who had sent troops to the Congo did not permit him to commit the U.N. "army" to battle-or even to a jungle skirmish. For hours after hearing Bunche's report, Dag pondered the strength of Tshombe's hand. At last, barely six hours before the first contingent was due to take off, Hammarskjold canceled orders for U.N. troops to enter Katanga. Cabling ahead to call a special meeting of the Security Council, Hammarskjold boarded a plane for New York...
...offered to mobilize their minuscule armed forces to help throw the Belgians out. "This," announced Touré, "is henceforth the responsibility of African soldiers." But the sharpest cut of all came from the weather-vane Congo government, whose Cabinet only a few hours earlier had voted full confidence in Dag. From Premier Lumumba, still off on his travels, came instructions to his Cabinet colleagues to demand the immediate departure of all U.N. troops from the Congo. After all, he said, "they are only parading in the Congo, instead of aiding us in the evacuation of Belgian troops...