Word: kamina
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Hanging On. In the swirling Congo, this charge was hard to prove or disprove. But the Belgians did seem to be stalling on their promise to evacuate their troops from the last big airbases they controlled, including the spacious, well-equipped Kamina strip in Katanga. Hammarskjold fired off a stiff note to Brussels, virtually accusing the Belgians of lying in assuring him that all their soldiers had left when, in fact, he charged, 600 remained. Belgium called this figure "exaggerated," replied tartly that insufficient U.N. transport planes had been provided...
Belgian concern over the future of Kamina was understandable. With the dozen or more newly arrived II-14 transports that the Soviets gave him, Lumumba, if he got control of Kamina, would certainly use it as a beachhead for his muchheralded invasion of Katanga province. To neutralize the base, the U.N. moved in an Irish battalion and barred all flights from Kamina's runways...
...booby traps. Stretches of the single-track rail line leading into Katanga from Kasai were ripped up, and armed Katangans with dynamite rushed out to block the few dirt roads at the Kasai frontier. Most of Tshombe's force was a ragtag outfit, but Belgian officers at Kamina airbase were openly supplying him with spotter planes and tactical advice. At week's end the Lumumba troops paused 20 miles from the frontier, awaiting the attack order. Unlike Kalonji's Mining State, Katanga would scarcely fall without a fight-a fight that the 4,000 U.N. troops stationed...
This week, weary of being squeezed, Eyskens himself began to put the squeeze on the Atlantic Community. He hinted that Belgium's abandoning the two NATO military bases of Kamina and Kitona in the Congo would save him a great of money, perhaps $70 million. He made noises about cutting the Belgian contribution of two divisions to NATO, and about backing out of an agreement to buy $100 worth of Starfighters to be used in cooperation with West Germany and the Netherlands...
...other large cities under U.N. control, a few factories were cautiously reopened by European managers, and peddlers were again hawking carved trinkets of ivory and mahogany on the streets. But there was promise of a new dispute. Belgian troops withdrew only to the two big Congo military bases of Kamina and Kitona, balked at leaving the country as Lumumba demanded...