Word: hammarskjolds
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From the start, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold had handled the troubles of the Congo with brisk diplomatic skill, using them, among other things, to enhance the U.N.'s prestige and authority. But as always, Hammarskjold and the U.N. were crippled by one overriding weakness: the U.N.'s inability to counter the threat of force with threatened force of its own. When one defiant man-Premier Moise Tshombe of the Congo's rebellious Katanga province-threatened resistance to the U.N. forces, all Hammarskjold's carefully laid plans went agley...
...Security Council, Hammarskjold presented two clear choices as to what to do next. The Council could authorize him to send U.N. forces into Katanga ready to shoot. Or, as Dag plainly favored, the Council could offer Tshombe assurance that the presence of U.N. troops would not be used to force Katanga to submit to the Congo government...
...efforts of Dag Hammarskjold have, it appears, prevented the Congolese from shooting each other for at least a week. President Moise Tshombe of Katanga Province, realizing at last the validity of the curious proposition that armed force may be necessary to keep his province peaceful, has agreed to let the U.N. enter...
This is the sort of annoyance that Dag Hammarskjold cannot soothe, and the sort that can transform Khrushchev into something remarkably like a Cheshire Cat. Even if all the unrest of the Congo were to disappear, Belgian resentment would still be the stuff of which rifts in NATO are all too easily made...
Leaving the frustrated and fuming Belgians behind, Hammarskjold turned down the offer of a Belgian jet to Leopoldville, boarded instead a KLM DC-7 to neutral Brazzaville, across the river in French Congo. Crossing the river in a launch, he soon was confronting the Congolese Cabinet. Prodded by sharp telegrams from Lumumba, the Cabinet insistently demanded that Hammarskjold use force if necessary to clear the Belgian troops out of Katanga...