CONGO: The Embassy Firefight

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In Léopoldville one long, hot day last week, the simmering conflict between the U.N. Command and Congolese Military Strongman Colonel Joseph Mobutu finally reached a showdown.

In the morning, as two big crocodiles yawned lazily on the nearby riverbank, Congolese Interior Commissioner José Nussbaumer strode into the Ghanaian embassy and ordered Chargé d'Affaires Nathaniel Welbeck to leave the country that afternoon on a Sabena plane. "I'm not at home to you!" screamed Welbeck, waving a red and white fetish stick in indignation. "Get out and stay out!" Already on his way to the door, Nussbaumer turned and shouted: "I'll be back at 3 o'clock to make sure you take that plane."

Wisps from the Pipe. The hassle was an old story to the U.N. staff in Leéopoldville. Brawny, racist-minded Diplomat Welbeck, once Kwame Nkrumah's top political skull-basher back in Ghana, had long been one of Léopoldville's biggest troublemakers. At Nkrumah's bidding, he shot about the Congolese capital lining up all possible support for Colonel Mobutu's archfoe, deposed Premier Patrice Lumumba, and was helped in his endeavors by the curious policy of the U.N. Command's Rajeshwar Dayal who offered U.N. protection to virtually everyone save working officials of the Congo government. Last month Welbeck was declared persona non grata by Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu, but refused to leave. Confident that the Congo army would never attack his U.N. guards, Welbeck acted as though the Kasavubu government did not exist.

Last week once again the U.N. Command inscrutably chose to come to Welbeck's aid. Soon after Nussbaumer's ultimatum, the U.N. sent reinforcements that raised the U.N. guard at the Ghanaian embassy to 170 Tunisian soldiers. The Congo was represented by a handful of military police headed by busting Security Inspector Henri N'Gampo, which frequently retreated behind a hedge to stuff his pipe with bangi, a Congolese form of marijuana.

By late afternoon, apparently drug-crazed, Inspector N'Gampo was out of control. He scrambled about shouting "We will kill him." Then his unpredictable anger turned on three Western reporters, including TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs. He ordered them arrested as Communists and interrupted their protests "Shut up or you die!" Only the arrival of a personal emiissary from Colonel Mobutu persuaded him to free the newsmen.

A Burst in the Chest. At 7 o'clock, 200 nervous Colongolese troops arrived and deployed facing the embassy. TheTunisians, equally jittery, eyed them in the growing dusk. At 7:40, Lieut. Colonel Joseph N'Kokolo, second-ranking officer in the Congo army started across the street with the evident intention of conferring with the Tunisian commanding officer. This was the moment Police inspector N'Gampo chose to shout "Tirez: [Fire]!" A French-speaking Tunisian pulled the trigger of his submachine gun; the burst smashed into the chest of Colonel N'Kokolo, killing him instantly. Both sides wildly opened fire, and, in the first exchange, while he was still screaming "Tirez!", Policeman N'Gampo fell, seriously wounded.