Word: lumumba
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Once assembled in Casablanca's ornate city hall, the leaders needed only nine hours to come up with "concrete solutions" to the Congo problem. All Dag Hammarskjold and the U.N. need do, they said, was spring Russian-backed Patrice Lumumba from jail and restore him as Premier, evacuate all Belgian armed forces, reconvene the Congolese parliament and completely outlaw any separatist movements like that in mineral-rich Katanga province. If Hammarskjold refused to accept their blueprint, they threatened to pick up their soldiers (some 6,500 men, or one-third of the U.N. force in the Congo...
...theory, both Patrice Lumumba and his ambitions were safely mewed up in Colonel Joseph Mobutu's army camp. In fact, Lumumba was doing just about as well inside as out. For one thing, he had talked his way out of his jail cell, now had the run of the camp and ate in the officers' mess. More important, his followers, quietly and steadily, were spreading the Lumumba banner over more and more of the troubled nation, just as if Patrice himself had been there giving orders...
Headquarters of Lumumba's shadow government is Stanleyville, the slick little river capital of Eastern province. There Lumumba's Prague-trained Vice Premier Antoine Gizenga holds firm control of the local Congolese army and police force in defiance of frustrated "Boss" Mobutu inLéopoldville. With this foothold, Gizenga & Co. were pressuring Equator province, reaching into Kivu, and looking greedily at northern Katanga as well...
...disavow Mobutu, the invaders simply kidnaped the conferees-Kivu's provincial president, a couple of his ministers and the local army commander-and hauled them back to Stanleyville to get them out of the way. Suddenly, Kivu had a new provincial boss, who turned out to be another Lumumba crony, former Minister of Information Anicet Kashamura...
...Roundup. But when Mobutu's troops crossed the bridge under a white flag and advanced on the town, Kashamura's pro-Lumumba soldiers greeted them with a cascade of chattering machine guns and banging rifles. When it was all over four hours later, no one much had been hurt, but Mobutu's invaders were in jail. So was their commander, who promptly changed sides and began issuing statements damning Mobutu as a "colonialist intriguer...