Word: lumumba
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...Give Up." It was not safe to be a peaceable U.N. employee in the Congo last week. Two U.N. officers were set upon and robbed by Lumumba's own office guards when they arrived to deliver a note from U.N. Special Representative Ralph Bunche. Combing the town for "Belgians in disguise," Congolese police invaded Leopoldville's hotels in the early hours of the morning, turned out white occupants for inspection...
...Next, Lumumba tried to grab control of Leopoldville's U.N.-run Ndjili Airport. First he got permission to station a few unarmed Congolese at the field. To everyone's astonishment, he then arrived himself at the head of 114 soldiers, all armed to the teeth. Soon Congolese soldiers were arresting every "suspicious" U.N. man in sight. A group of Norwegian soldiers fresh in from Europe were held as "Belgian paratroopers," and a Pakistan colonel was threatened with bayonets. "I give up!" shouted a U.N. brigadier from Ghana, throwing his garrison cap into the air in disgust after...
Canada sternly protested the incident, and angry Ralph Bunche went on Radio Leopoldville to complain on behalf of the U.N. "We have been subjected to senseless provocation," said Bunche sternly. Blandly, Lumumba brushed the affair off as "a banal incident . . . deliberately magnified by the Secretary-General...
Africans Alarmed. But with the episode, Lumumba had finally overreached himself. When his U.N. delegation at last arrived in New York (in a Soviet IL-18 turbojet), virtually the only voices raised in their favor were Communist. Echoing Moscow's radio blasts against Hammarskjold, Soviet U.N. Delegate Vasily Kuznetsov protested that most of the U.N. technicians in the Congo had been recruited from Western countries, demanded that "armed groups from Canada" be withdrawn from the Congo, since Canada was a Belgian ally in NATO...
Despite Russian efforts to pose as the protectors of African freedom, many African nations themselves were increasingly weary of Lumumba's troublemaking. Liberia's President William Tubman con fessed he was "perplexed and frustrated" by Lumumba's attitude. Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba declared that "there is a limit to how far Tunisia will go along with the Congo," and gave his support to Hammarskjold...