The Congo: A Little Neighborliness

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Across Stanley Pool chugged the river ferry Congolia No. 10. At the "beach," the wooden customs shed on the Leopoldville side of the river, who should step ashore but Charles-Daniel Ganao, Foreign Minister of the radical leftist Brazzaville Congo regime. At the beach to welcome him were the Congo's Interior Minister Victor Nendaka and a knot of young

Congolese bearing signs such as "Vive le Congo Brazzaville" and "Down with Neo-Colonialism."

Strange goings-on indeed for two old enemies. The two Congos have been bitterly divided by ideology, with Leopoldville firmly pro-West and Brazzaville under Chinese Communist influence. They have been feuding ever since the Brazzaville crowd threw their weight behind the Congolese rebels trying to overthrow the Leopoldville government, and the feud grew even more intense when Moise Tshombe, whom African nationalists once despised, took over as Premier in Leopoldville.

But with the rebellion finally quelled and Tshombe forced out of office last month, President Joseph Kasavubu figured it was time to bring his neighborly relations back to normal. His first step came at the African "summit" meeting at Accra, where he neatly buried the hatchet with such neighbors as Tanzania and the Sudan, which had also supported the rebels. Last week, after hours of "pleasant" conversation in Leopoldville, Brazzaville's Ganao succumbed to the Kasavubu treatment as well. The two Congos agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations and restore the permanent ferry service that had once linked their two capitals every half-hour.