Word: mobutu
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...most troublesome enemy of Congo President Joseph Mobutu is Moise Tshombe, 47, the wily pro-Western politician who ran copper-rich Katanga as a secessionist state in the early 1960s, later served for 15 months as the Con o's Premier, and still commands wide support in the country. After Mobutu seized power in a bloodless army-backed coup 21 months ago, he forced Tshombe into permanent exile, later had him sentenced to death in absentia for high treason. Mobutu sees the hand of Tshombe in every disturbance in the Congo, is convinced that he is plotting a comeback...
...week Tshombe sat in a shuttered police cell in Algiers, having been kidnaped on a private airplane over the Mediterranean and flown into Algeria. The Congolese government immediately asked Algeria to extradite him so that the sentence of execution could be carried out. Even in jail, however, Tshombe haunted Mobutu. Outraged by his abduction, Tshombe's followers in the eastern part of the Congo rose in revolt, seized two important towns and raised fears that the country might be plunged into another bloody civil...
...silencer-equipped automatic pistol, shot at (but apparently did not hit) the first passenger who moved, and singlehanded took over the plane. So far, there is no evidence the others were in on the plot. The motive was most likely money: anyone who succeeded in delivering Tshombe to Mobutu could count on becoming very rich...
...Mobutu searched the world for a new team of technicians, even dickered with a rival consortium about taking over the mines. In the end he found no one who would or could come...
...days ago, faced with a possible halt in production of the copper and cobalt that account for 50% of his country's revenues, Mobutu swallowed his slogans, signed an agreement for continued operation of the mines with Sociètè Gènèrale des Minèrals (called S.G.M.), a Union Minière affiliate. "This is not a betrayal," he avowed on TV last week. Nevertheless, Congolese students drummed up discontent, and one leading businessman wired Mobutu: "We have undressed Peter to dress Paul...