Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...command, having backed all the main antagonists into corners, now seemed to be in full charge in Leopoldville, yet was powerless to create the solution it wanted. To bring back Parliament would probably be tantamount to re-electing the erratically irresponsible Patrice Lumumba; it might also send Colonel Joseph Mobutu's ragtag army up in flames. Besides, President Joseph Kassvubu was dead against it. To prop up Mobutu would incur the wrath of many of the U.N.'s African member nations, for they insist that Lumumba is the only-or at least the legally proper...
Groping for a solution, Hammarskjold recalled Dayal to New York for consultation, simultaneously releasing Dayal's angry official report, which described Mobutu's regime as a "usurpation of political powers" and blamed much of the Congo's current troubles on Belgium, whose agents, said the report, were flocking back in to "exclude or obstruct" the U.N. itself. Promptly, the Belgians screamed "foul," hinted that Foreign Minister Pierre Wigny himself would fly over from Brussels to reply during this week's General Assembly debate. Then Hammarskjold got word that even the U.S. was upset at the report...
Guarding the Arsenal. Leopoldville's African quarter has been plagued for days by a wave of raping, looting and shooting. Many of the attacks were the work of gangs of roving civilian bullies. But some of Mobutu's soldiers, sent into the African city to search for arms and political enemies, had roughed up their quarry, had in some instances proved trigger-happy. Already angered by Mobutu's threat to bring an armored unit into Léopoldville to impose his will, Dayal called the bespectacled colonel on the carpet before an array of U.N. brass, issued...
...Mobutu protested he had not authorized violence, suggested that the political opposition was behind much of it. His intention, said Mobutu, was to cooperate fully with the U.N. "Then get the army off the streets," snapped India's General Inder Jit Rikhye, Dayal's military adviser. Meekly, Mobutu agreed to withdraw most of his troops to army headquarters outside the city, where the U.N. planned an intensive training program to inject some discipline into its ranks. But the U.N. let him keep his soldiers around Patrice Lumumba's house and at the radio station, and, for some...
...week's end rumors swirled through Léopoldville that the U.N. would disarm Mobutu's army, but Dayal's men denied it. Timorous Joseph Kasavubu sat in his presidential palace, sending out vague messages of endorsement for Mobutu but too frightened to get involved openly. Patrice Lumumba, nipping heavily at an always present bottle, also remained at home, awaiting the day when the confused maneuvering would let him emerge as the real boss again. If he did, it would probably not be long before he invited back all the Russian "technicians" that Mobutu had kicked...