CONGO: Long Way to Go

Chaos is never absolute. It can always get more chaotic, and last week in the Congo it did.

For Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba it was a week of humiliation. Lumumba's first setback came from the hands of the 13-nation African "summit" conference he had grandiosely convened in a nondescript Leopoldville auditorium. Lumumba had hoped his brother Africans would promise him military aid and moral support. Instead, delegates from Tunisia, Morocco and the Algerian rebel "government" had a message of their own for Lumumba to hear: they were alarmed by his irresponsible attacks on the United Nations. "Lumumba's childish behavior is damaging all Africans," rasped one North African.

"We Are Obsessed." Furiously. Lumumba's newspaper accused the North Africans of cuddling up to U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in return for his promise to help them in the next U.N. debate on the Algerian war. Unmoved, the majority of the African "summiteers" agreed to a resolution urging the Congo to halt further incidents of violence against the U.N. forces, and pointedly recalling that U.N. troops had come "at the express request" of the Congolese government. The resolution expressly commended both Hammarskjold and Ralph Bunche (who last week headed home from the Congo declaring "I am a man of patience, but my patience has worn thin").

At the final summit session, as the resolutions were read. Lumumba fiddled and twitched, then rose to retort that "the incidents never would have taken place if from the first there had been a spirit of cooperation on the U.N.'s part." As if to explain away his troops' attacks on U.N. personnel, he shouted, "We are obsessed with the idea of immediately entering Katanga and liberating our brothers!" Then, waving a wad of yellow "membership cards" in a manner reminiscent of the late Joe McCarthy, he charged that the Belgians had formed a private army to aid Moise Tshombe, Premier of the secessionist Congo province of Katanga.

Hanging On. In the swirling Congo, this charge was hard to prove or disprove. But the Belgians did seem to be stalling on their promise to evacuate their troops from the last big airbases they controlled, including the spacious, well-equipped Kamina strip in Katanga. Hammarskjold fired off a stiff note to Brussels, virtually accusing the Belgians of lying in assuring him that all their soldiers had left when, in fact, he charged, 600 remained. Belgium called this figure "exaggerated," replied tartly that insufficient U.N. transport planes had been provided.

Belgian concern over the future of Kamina was understandable. With the dozen or more newly arrived II-14 transports that the Soviets gave him, Lumumba, if he got control of Kamina, would certainly use it as a beachhead for his muchheralded invasion of Katanga province. To neutralize the base, the U.N. moved in an Irish battalion and barred all flights from Kamina's runways.

Bodies in Bakwanga. Whether Lumumba has the military capability to conquer Katanga is becoming increasingly uncertain. At week's end the Lumumba forces assigned to spearhead the Katanga invasion were bogged down in the neighboring province of Kasai in what seemed to be building into a civil war of serious proportions.