REBEL DRIVE AIMS TO CUT CONGO

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30542, 10 September 1964, Page 17

REBEL DRIVE AIMS TO CUT CONGO

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LEOPOLDVILLE, September 9. Communist-backed rebels driving to cut. the Congo in two are bidding for diplomatic recognition for the Congolese People’s Republic they proclaimed on Sunday, the Associated Press reported. The agency said this was learned today from rebel radio messages intercepted in Leopoldville.

Other messages from the rebel zone said the Congolese army still held most of the key town of Boende, about 200 air miles east of Coquilhatville, capital of Cuvette Centrale Province in the northwestern Congo.

Boende is one of the last barriers between the rebels and Coquilhatville and the possibility of cutting the Congo in two. T2B strike planes strafed Government positions around Boende by mistake. The planes, flown by anti-Castro Cuban pilots, caused some casualties. A group of white mercenary soldiers is on its way to the northern Congolese town of Gemena, in Übangi Province. Rebel warriors moving down the Congo river from Stanleyville are threatening Gemena. On the eastern side of the Congo, Government troops have occupied the village of Bendera, about 80 miles north of Albertville. The rebels now control about one quarter of this

hot, mineral-rich country in the heart of Africa. The dispatch of white volunteers from South Africa to the Congo for Mr Tshombe’s forces has been stopped and the 100 or so men standing by here have been told to “go back home,” the chief recruiting officer said here today. The officer, 46-year-old Mr Patrick O’Malley, said: "We have been overtaken by the international situation. You only have to read the newspapers to see what I mean." At the meeting of the Organisation for African Unity at Addis Ababa, Mr Tshombe offered to dsimiss his white mercenaries if an all-African peace force was provided. In Addis Ababa, Emperor Haile Selassie has intervened to keep the 34-nation Organisation from recognuising the Communist-backed rebels in the Congo. The Ethiopian Emperor took the surprise initiative committee had considered a

after a seven-nation O.A.U. draft resolution including a proposal for a conference between Mr Tshombe’s Government and the Congolese rebels.