Tshombe Denies Seeing Lumumba Murdered

Press, Volume C, Issue 29673, 17 November 1961, Page 15

Tshombe Denies Seeing Lumumba Murdered

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 15. The President of Katanga, Mr Moise Tshombe, has formally denied United Nations allegations that he and some of his Ministers were present when the Congo’s first Prime Minister, Mr Patrice Lumumba, was murdered.

Mr Tshombe’s denial w’as issued by the Katanga Information Office in New York last night, after a telephone conversation with Mr Tshombe in E’isabethville, United Press International reported. A United Nations inquiry commission reported this week that all evidence indicated that Mr Lumumba and two associates were killed on January 17 in a villa near Elisabethville, where they had been taken after their arrest in Leopoldville. The report said Lumumba was killed by a certain Colonel Huyghe, “in all probability” in the presence of high Katangese officials, including Mr Tshombe. Mr Tshombe dismissed the testimony on which the report was based as largely rumour. He said the commission itself admitted some of the witnesses were “unstable” and their evidence contradictory. Mr Tshombe said the commission should have visited

Leopoldville and Elisabethville if they had wanted to find out exactly what happened. He dismissed the commission’s claim that it had been refused entry permits. He said: “The United Nations representatives in the Congo themselves have violated so many times the principle of non-interference that it now seems strange they want to respect it in this case. Clearly, they prefer their own truth to the truth.” A British witness told the commission that he had been informed Mr Lumumba rolled on the ground, screaming for mercy, before he was shot. The commission’s report quoted the Briton as saying Colonel Huyghe had told him that Lumumba had promised he would give anything if he was spared. "Lumumba, according to Huyghe, fell on the ground and started rolling and screaming for mercy, and Huyghe said he shot him as he rolled on the ground,” the British witness was quoted as having said. The report said he added: “I said, ‘Christ, no, Charley,* and he said. ‘Yes, Roddi, it is so.' But I would like to stress here . . . that we had both been drinking and Huyghe at that time might have been bragging—though I would not personally put it past Huyghe to have carried out this act.” Security Council Debate The Security Council will renew debate today on the Congo as the controversial United Nations representative in Katanga, Dr. Conor O’Brien heads for New York to report to the acting Secre-tary-General (U Thant). Dr. O’Brien came under sharp criticism in the council last night from the Belgian Foreign Minister (Mr Spaak) for allegedly blaming the United Nations' Congo difficulties on the Belgians. Mr Spaak suggested that Dr. O’Brien authorised the disastrous United Nations operation in Katanga In September without the sanction of the then SecretaryGeneral, Mr Dag Hammarskjold, who later lost his life on his way to negotiate a cease-fire. Mr Spaak said he was "always ready to believe it was decided upon in the field without the Secretary-Gen-eral’s being duly informed of all the dangers of the operation.” Once the operation was carried out, Dr O’Brien confronted “certain difficulties." and “he tried to explain these by blaming the Belgians" Mr Spaak spoke at some length in the council after delegates of Liberia and the United Arab Republic had urged the council to adopt a resolution authorising U

Thant to “take vigorous action, including the use of a requisite measure of force, if necessary, for the immediate apprehension . . . and deportation of all foreign mercenaries.” A United Nations spokesman said that U Thant had given United Nations forces in the Congo “firm authorisation to take every measure possible to restore law and order” in Albertville and Kindu, where mutiny has erupted. i The Acting-Secretary-Gen-eral had discussed the “new crisis” by telex with United Nations officials in Leopoldville for more than an hour yesterday morning, he said. They had discussed the mutiny—“you could call it that”—of Congolese troops in Albertville and in Kindu Ln Kivu Province, he said. He said that the latest reports from the Congo were that the United Nations had had no success in getting the release of the 13 Italian airmen held in Kindu. “There are grave fears for their fate at this time,” he said.