Jackson Advocate

Congo Referee Expands Role
The Christian Science Monitor
United Nations refereeing power in the Congo continues to keep pace-by the narrowest margin-with the haphazard growth of crisis there.
Each UN action in the Congo has been a countermove to some new extremist patience. But it is a definite and welcome sign of progress.
Certainly the latest such countermove--UN immobilization of the chief Congo radio station and the country's main airports-has proved an effective temporary damper to the political civil war now opened between President Kasavubu and Premier Lumumba. It should also halt the fanning of civil strife through air-lifted Soviet military aid to Lumumba forces.
The UN is cast in the role of a referee for a free-for-all. It is hampered by having to umpire from a rule book that has just two or three rules in it, while the contest in progress has virtually no rules. And meanwhile it must satisfy its two chief spectators -- the Soviet Union, which is in favor of virtually no refereeing (because it is backing the man on top at the moment): and the United States, which wants more refereeing (particularly since it has seen the Soviets climb out of the bleachers and hand Lumumba a bludgeon).
The UN is wisely asserting itself only when it can clearly use the mandate given Mr. Hammarskjold by his Security Council: that is, to maintain peace and order. In proceeding slowly it continues to carry the support of the newly independent black African nations behind it. This helps ward off Soviet vetoes of its actions.
But the UN is still in, not over, the Congo. It cannot, under its current limited powers, decide the personal issues between Mr. Lumumba and his two chief opponents, legitimate head-of-state Kasavubu and breakaway Premier Tshombe. Nor can it finally decide whether the concept of a strong unitary state or of a loose federation will prevail in the Congo. The latter is logically preferable -but not if it means chaos and the Balkanization of central Africa.
We hope that the UN action in controlling airwaves and airports is to be followed by other moves that prevent unilateral foreign intervention. Such action would follow the precedent set by UN observers during Lebanon's 1958 civil conflict.
It is vital that the internal Congolese rivalry be localized. Soviet meddling is potentially far more destructive to a peaceful settlement than was the Belgian foot-dragging that brought in UN forces.
If the neighboring African states realize this and move to permit the referee wider authority to keep spectators out of the melee, they will be doing the cause of African nationalism a great service. And they may be helping save the world from a repeat of Spain and Korea.