Africans Disliked Congo Rescue

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30610, 28 November 1964, Page 17

Africans Disliked Congo Rescue

"T^Z.P.A.-KeuJer— Copyright) LONDON, November 27.

African student demonstrators beat up an Egyptian policeman guarding' the entrance to the library at the United States Embassy in Cairo last night, seriously injuring him, the Government newspaper “Al Akhbar” said today.

The Middle East News Agency said a fireman was injured while fighting a blaze which the students started, and which severely damaged the library.

The agency said the students converged on the library individually to protest against “United States interference” in the Congo.

The authoritative “Al Ahram” said an estimated 200 Congolese students stormed the Embassy, carrying canes, throwing stones and shouting anti-American slogans. When security forces arrived the students fled but 40 were arrested. Most of the Embassy staff were on leave as it was American Thanksgiving Day, the newspaper added. In Florence, Central Italy, some 50 African students held a protest march last night, carrying placards denouncing the Belgian operation in the Congo. In Djakarta the Indonesian Peace Committee condemned “U.S. and Belgian interference in the Congo,” Antara news agency reported. In Kuala Lumpur, the “Straits Times” said today it was a great pity African efforts to rescue hostages held by the Congo insurgents had I not been regarded more seriously. African nations would give less weight to the humanitarian motives involved than to the fact that the Stanleyville rescue mission contributed to the fall of the city to the Congolese Prime Mim ister, Mr Tshombe, the newspaper said. The New York “Herald Tribune” today accused China of complicity in the Congo insurgents’ action. The newspaper said the angry Chinese blast against the U.S.-Belgian rescue mission was “quite in line with

both the policy and the gutter morality of the Peking regime.” It said the fact that many leaders of African nations “would rather play along with Peking ... doesn’t speak well for their sophistication. Neither does it speak encouragingly for their nation's safety.” An official Chinese statement quoted by the New China News Agency yesterday said China would “take all possible measures to give firm support to the people of the Congo in their national liberation struggle.” In Washington, Mr Adlai Stevenson, chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations, has defended the Paulis rescue operation by Belgian

paratroops yesterday.

In a letter which he wrote to himself as current president of the U.N. Security Council. Mr Stevenson said at least 20 hostages at Paulis, including one American citizen, had been reported murdered. “It is clear from the statements of the rescued persons themselves that further delay would have meant an even greater number of tragic killings,” he wrote in the letter, the text of which was released by the State Department, last night. Mr Averell Harriman, the U.S. Under-Secretary of State, said in a radio interview yesterday he felt the hostage rescue mission would have a “salutary effect.”