Much Pomp, Some Progress - There was so much pomp and vanity, even hypocrisy, at the summit conference of the Organization of African Unity last week that it was sometimes hard for an outsider to see the tiny but very real, significant and exciting steps forward. Young and weak, ashamed of its weakness, the OAU often likes to hide its lack of power under the trappings of power, wasting precious time and energy. This hurts the OAU, making it seem comic and pathetic, even when it is progressing. An example came in midweek when the 18 chiefs of state and government stopped work in the afternoon to help the Congolese government dedicate a memorial to Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of The Congo, the first martyr of independent Africa. The tone and meaning of the ceremonies reflected many of the ills that afflict leadership in Africa...

The leaders of Africa tried to push the white mercenaries out of the eastern Congo Wednesday with a demand, an offer and a threat. But all three were cloaked in such vagueness that it is doubtful they changed the situation in the Congo at all. The mercenaries, led by Col. Jean Schramme, still rule the city of Bukavu and still have the potential to disrupt the administration and economy of the eastern Congo just the way they have for more than two months. The African leaders, meeting at the annual summit conference of the Organization of African Unity, passed a resolution demanding that the mercenaries leave Bukavu, if necessary with the help of competent international bodies, presumably the Red Cross. This implied a safe conduct for the mercenaries. The OAU, which called its resolution a generous offer, based it on the assumption that Schramme and his 150 men want to leave and are tired of fighting for little purpose and no pay since their rebellion began July 5...

President Mobutu Scores Moral Victory Over Mercenaries Ruling Eastern Area - Eighteen African leaders marched past powder blue - uniformed, red-plumed Congolese honor guards to open the annual African summit conference Monday and give President Joseph D. Mobutu a moral victory over the white mercenaries who rule part of his eastern Congo. The 18 chiefs of state and governments represented less than half the membership of the Organization of African Unity, a meager percentage by most diplomatic standards. But the slight figure seems outsize and formidable in the Congo this week because, for two months, there have been doubts that any one at all would ever show up. Since July 5, the white mercenaries of Col. Jean Schramme have been in rebellion, disrupting the eastern Congo, humiliating the Congolese army and ruling the city of Bukavu...

Conferees Try to Ignore Col. Schramme's White Mercenaries, Nigerian Civil War - The Organization of African Unity opens the pageantry of its annual summit conference today with the main actors trying to shut their eyes to the two great problems tormenting Africa. The Nigerian civil war and the white mercenaries of Col. Jean Schramme may fill the thoughts and darken the spirits of the African foreign ministers meeting here now to discuss African problems and prepare the agenda for the fourth annual conference. But, so far, the ministers have managed to keep their pronouncements and the agenda free of the two embarrassments. The foreign ministers have faced diplomatic realities and concentrated on safer subjects, like the appointment of a special committee to choose an emblem for the OAU. The federal government of Nigeria insists that the civil war is nobody else's business, and the government of the Congo maintains that the white mercenaries are now of only trifling importance. And the OAU - at least its council of foreign ministers - is too weak to dispute them.

'Neo-Colonial' Economy Booming - The gross national product of Kenya grew by 10% in 1966, a spectacular rate for developing Africa. It has confounded the country's many critics. Since independence in 1963, Kenya has maintained a western capitalist atmosphere in hopes of attracting foreign capital and keeping many foreigners in technical jobs. Although it is committed to "African socialism" on paper, the government has made it clear that it believes nationalization of foreign enterprises is too costly for a poor country like Kenya. The Kenya way of development seems the most logical one. Because it was an old British settler colony, Kenya had a spirit of pioneering free enterprise, a history of foreign investment and a cadre of non-African managers and technicians. Kenya leaders decided it made more sense to build on this economy than to disrupt or destroy it and start anew. For this, Kenya has been criticized, particularly by Africans in countries that came to independence with economies so weak they could be molded into anything...

For nearly four years, one of the world's least known rebellions has plagued the northern quarter of Kenya near the border of the Somali Republic. Approximately 2,600 persons have died at the hands of the rebels or government forces. Last week, the Kenya government allowed newsmen into the area for the first time on a supervised tour. With an improbable mixture of guns, grenades, schools and clinics, the Kenya government is trying to put down a guerrilla rebellion here in the semidesert of northern Kenya. The government's targets are the disaffected Somalis who want nearly one quarter of Kenya to secede and become part of the neighboring Somali Republic. Kenya officials have a purpose in combining a social revolution with police action. They are convinced they can triumph over the Shifta, as the rebels are called, only if they can end the nomadic life of the Somalis and get them to settle down with villages, schools, health centers, and water wells...

Lack Will to Mold Future - What is a Congo mercenary? In some African lexicons it is the lowest form of humanity - a white man who kills Africans for a dollar. This definition, at least about the dollar, is partly true but it tells us little. A mercenary is a complex, confused, tough man, and no man can be defined, in a lexicon. In some ways, the 160 mercenaries here in Bukavu are surprising. Since July 5, these men and their thousand or so allies from Katanga province have disrupted the eastern Congo, routed the Congolese army and seized this cool picturesque city in the hills alongside Lake Kivu. Yet the first thing that strikes you about them is how passive they seem. They are the kind of men who have been pulled along by events in their past and who lack the will to mold their future. A Rhodesian related the details of his recruitment...

Nation Seems Too Unstable for Control by Mobutu, Mercenaries or Americans - Neither President Joseph D. Mobutu, the white mercenaries nor the U.S. government can save the Congo from more turmoil and bloodletting. The mercenary seizure of Bukavu has made that clear. The lumbering, luxuriant Congo is too big, too cruel, too unnerved to be managed by Mobutu, the mercenaries or the Americans. For Mobutu, the mercenary uprising of the last five weeks has undermined his power and prestige. His position seems a little embarrassing, even comical. Almost all the accusations and boasts broadcast by his government radio have been picked apart and exposed as lies. Hordes of foreign parachutists never invaded the Congo. The white civilians protected by the mercenaries never considered themselves hostages. The Congolese army never surrounded the mercenaries. The mercenaries never fled from them. Mobutu might have won a great deal of sympathy throughout the world by telling the truth...

White Troops, Buoyed by Escapade, Grow Testy From Uncertainty in Congo - The white mercenaries who rule this city in defiance of Congolese President Joseph D. Mobutu and his army are a group of confident and prideful men from many lands who are growing tired these days and testy with each other. Their confidence and pride comes from their extraordinary escapade of the last five weeks in which they have disrupted the eastern Congo and routed the Congolese army. Their fatigue and bickering comes from the pointlessness of it all and the uncertainty of the future. Even mercenaries want to know occasionally where they are going and why. The air of confidence - even cocksureness - strikes you as soon as you walk across the tiny trestle bridge that connects Rwanda with Bukavu, the old Belgian settler city that nestles in the cool green hills along Lake Kivu in the eastern Congo. A Portuguese mercenary, dark, grinning, showing his ice teeth, is waiting. You want to see the commander? He slaps on his bush hat, the wide brims folded up in the dashing way of movie heroes...

Nigeria's Civil War - Africans are dying in Nigeria these days because powerful white men, in an almost playful mood, sat down to draw a few straight lines on a vague map more than half century ago. That is the root cause of the Nigerian civil war. The federal military government of Nigeria is trying to crush the secession of the old eastern region, which calls itself Biafra now, to preserve the territorial integrity of the nation. But what does the territorial integrity of Nigeria mean? At the turn of the century, the British, French and Germans decided to avoid any warring by sharing their colonial spoils in an amicable way. They did it by carving up a map. "In those days we just took a blue pencil and a rule and we put it down at old Calabar and drew that line up to Yola," said a British negotiator who helped set the boundary between eastern Nigeria and the old German Cameroon at that time. While dividing northern Nigeria from French Niger, according to another British official, the British and French "have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were..."

Belgian Says Congo Rebellion Has Roots in Need for Representative Government - Col. Jean Schramme, who has shattered the Congo's fragile political stability by leading white mercenaries to a rout of the Congolese army, is a slight, diffident-seeming Belgian who talks in the idealistic tones of a peace-loving missionary. Here, in the eastern Congo city that he rules, he told a few newsmen, who had walked across the bridge Thursday from neighboring Rwanda, that his five-week rebellion had its roots in the need of the Congo for representative government and economic development. He seemed to want to play down reports that the main aim of his mercenaries was the release of their grand patron, Moise Tshombe, who is in prison in Algiers. Instead, he talked about the place that Tshombe should have in a representative government. "I think Tshombe is the representative of the Katangese people," he said. "But that's just my opinion." Then Schramme had his one truculent moment in the interview...

Irritability Increases With Accusations by New Vice President; Break May Come - Kenya officials are so annoyed with the Chinese Communist Embassy these days that they flare up at any minor move the Chinese make. The irritation of the Kenyans developed after a series of offensive pronouncements by the Chinese during the last few months. Now, relations between the two governments are tenuous; they might even break. The Chinese offended the Kenya government so much that some Western diplomats believe it was done by design. No diplomat, in their view, could really be as gauche as the Chinese have seemed. An example of the Kenyan irritation came a few days ago when Vice President Daniel Arap Moi accused the Chinese Embassy of interference in domestic affairs because it had mailed some Mao Tse-tung buttons and some copies of his "Selected Works" and "Quotations" to a secondary schoolteacher in a small country town. Moi's angry accusation was surprising since the Chinese mailing differed little from what other embassies, including the American, try to do...

Rebellious Whites Take Full Control of Congo City, Show Power by Marching to Rwanda to Release Civilians - Rebellious white mercenary units took full control of the important eastern Congo city of Bukavu and served notice they would keep control until kidnaped Moise Tshombe, former Congo premier, is released and returned to Congo political life. The column of mercenaries demonstrated their control by marching to the Rwanda border and releasing the first of the more than 100 white civilians who had lived with them in the Congolese bush for the last month. The Congolese government radio had called these civilians hostages, but the civilians, as soon as they reached Rwanda, insisted that they had joined the mercenaries for their own protection. No one standing here on Rwanda border could doubt the control and power of the 150 mercenaries and their 700 to 800 allies, the former African gendarmes of the Congo's secessionist Katanga province...

Newsmen Discover - The book charge was simple: "Admiring the light of the moon." Three of us had browsed along the bank of the Congo River at 1:30 a.m. The moon was whole and almost yellow, but no reflection seemed to light upon the river, a vast expanse of brown shadows rushing in the darkness. Some lights from Brazzaville across the river speckled the view on the right, and the lights on top of Mt. Stanley, the home of the president, did the same on the left. The air was cool and quiet. We turned, and a man approached us in the dark. He stopped 30 feet away. He wore a long overcoat that made him seem shapeless. A rifle jutted out from one side of him. He asked us what we were doing, and we told him we had come to admire this beautiful view of the Congo River in the moonlight, and he called out nervously, "Sergeant. Sergeant." Congo lore is full of tales of Congolese soldiers who, fearful and distrustful, suddenly panic and fire away...

Washington Has Kept Reds Out Without a Vietnam - Here in the Congo, it seems natural for U.S. Air Force C-130 transport planes to roar across Congolese skies with Congolese soldiers, ammunition and food. The C-130s may be controversial with some congressmen back home who fear the mission will lead toward entanglement of the United States in Congolese affairs. But the truth of the matter is that, even without C-130s, the United States is entangled in the Congo and has been for almost seven years. The sudden dispatch of three fat planes has not changed a thing. The United States probably has more influence in the Congo than in any other African state. That influence comes from years of involvement. Of course, in Africa, words like entanglement, influence and involvement must be put in perspective...

Congo Trouble Spot - Kisangani, the town they once called Stanleyville is quiet and hot and tranquil. It is stirring feebly and helplessly, like most towns do in the calm and light that follow a hurricane. But no natural disaster wracked this town. The bullet holes that pock the stucco buildings make the difference clear. For eight days after July 5, white mercenaries of the Congolese army controlled the town. The way to control was bloody. Even after they had the town, the mercenaries could not keep peace. After the mercenaries left on July 12, Kisangani was engulfed by anti-white hysteria, and the stores and apartments of whites were smashed for several days. Finally, Red Cross planes and U.S. Air Force C-130s evacuated 290 of the 350 non-Africans in town and law and order was restored...

Lost rootless men sometimes fashion schemes of power and of glory out of their faded memory and their braggadocio. That may lie at the source of the latest crisis in the Congo. The restless men were: the exiled Moise Tshombe, a Congolese living like a suave continental businessman in Madrid, reaching for his memories of lost power, smug in his dreams; the white mercenaries of the Congolese army, self-exiled Europeans living like tribal lords, feeling their power and past slipping away, arrogant in their self-confidence. Their plots and schemes, foiled and then recharged, bloodied the Congo in the past two weeks. The best evidence, both factual and circumstantial, from all sources - diplomatic, Congolese government, academic, private - sketches a strange tale of intrigue and counterintrigue...

Predawn Mutiny Killed Hundreds of Sleeping Soldiers - Armored cars and truckloads of white mercenaries drove into an army camp at Kisangani in the blackness before dawn on July 5 and fired their submachine guns at benumbed African soldiers of the Congolese army. This terrible, sudden strike snapped the thin reins of stability in this massive, strange and luxurious country and let it fall into panic and chaos. It was a typical Congolese spell of confusion, or madness. No outsider really knows why it all happened. But with the help of accounts from onlookers, the story of how it happened is falling into place. In a sense, the mutiny of the white mercenaries was their last romantic and gory moment. The Congolese government intended to end its dependence on them by September. The mercenaries might have had to pack their things, collect their money, and slip quietly away then. Instead, their departure has been dramatic and bloody...

Almost 200 White Mercenaries Believed Hiding in Heavily Forested Lands of East - The Congolese army is reportedly ready to begin pursuit of almost 200 rebellious white mercenaries hiding in the thick forest land of the Eastern Congo. The army, according to reliable sources, is satisfied that it knows the general area where the mercenaries have taken refuge. In a sense, the mercenaries have come home - to the fiefdom of their leader, Maj. Jean Schramm. With the help of three U.S. C-130 transport planes and a squadron of Ethiopian jet fighters, the Congolese hope to move into the Schramm area and defeat the soldiers of fortune, whose bloody rebellion in Kisangani almost two weeks ago engulfed the Congo in yet another crisis and provoked a bitter reaction. In their anger and excitement, Congolese soldiers have beaten and killed innocent white residents and looted their homes and shops...

Congolese army officers tried valiantly and sometimes vainly in the past few days to hold back their own troops from beating whites, looting homes and firing wildly in Kisangani. This report came from several of the more than 300 refugees who arrived in Kinshasa Saturday aboard two Red Cross planes and a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane. Friedrich Engel, a German journalist stranded in Kisangani since July 5, told newsmen he believed 10 Europeans had been killed in the rampage of Congolese soldiers who entered the city after mercenaries fled Wednesday night. Engel said the officers made every effort to keep their men under control, but the men broke out from under the discipline and rushed through town from time to time in what has become a typical Congolese army victory celebration...

Transport, Sent in After Reports of Looting and Shooting, Returns With 9 Evacuees - The United States rushed a C-130 transport plane to the crisis-ridden city of Kisangani Friday after widespread reports of looting and shooting by the Congolese army which took over the city after rebel mercenaries fled. But the plane returned here with only nine evacuees, including two U.S. Army sergeants, one of them wounded. Two C-46 planes chartered by the International Red Cross brought in an other 100 refugees, most of them Congolese, including injured women and children. The wounded soldier, Sgt. John Degele of Dallas, a mechanic, and the other, Sgt. Robert Mack of Seattle, a radio operator, made up the U.S. Army Congo Mission team in Kisangani. Degele and Mack were believed captured by the mercenaries who took over the city at the start of the rebellion in the early hours of July 5...

Since modern war is fought and fraught with images as well as guns, the federal government of Nigeria, attempting to put down the secession of Biafra, is busy these days polishing up its own image for the world. The federal government, at least in theory, has entered a new era of public relations, in which it is trying to woo foreign newsmen, instead of harassing them. For months, the old eastern region of Nigeria, which seceded May 30 to become the independent Republic of Biafra, always seemed to have the edge on press play. British and American news stories about Nigeria were filled with interviews with C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, the 33-year-old, bearded, brilliant, witty, Oxford educated leader of Biafra. The stories documented the great grievance of his Ibo people who were massacred in northern Nigeria last year, and described at great length the tenacity, skill and intelligence of the Ibos, who make up two-thirds of Biafra's population. On the other hand, there was hardly ever a descriptive phrase about Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the federal military ruler, or a good analysis of why he believed Ojukwu must be crushed...

The Congolese army took control Thursday of Kisangani, the last rebel stronghold. Immediately after rebel mercenaries fled the big city of the eastern Congo, two International Red Cross planes flew in and picked up about 100 persons who had been stranded there. It was a desolate scene at the airport here when the refugees arrived. One plane carried about 50 Congolese wounded, the great majority of them Congolese army soldiers. In the other plane there were about 50 Europeans and Americans, most of them women and children, who had lived in Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville. The whites were tired, but not injured. One American woman told newsmen that the mercenaries were gentlemen. She said she did not know of a single white person who was held hostage by the mercenaries during the last week. But she added that perhaps the mercenaries had taken two or three hostages with them when they left Kisangani Wednesday night...

Feelings between the United States and Nigeria turned awkward and cold Tuesday as Nigerian officials showed their annoyance over the American refusal to sell them arms for the present civil war. Their displeasure was intensified by what they considered discrimination. They saw the United States sending giant transport planes to the Congo for its military use at the same time that Nigeria was rebuffed on its request for arms. "Apparently," a government spokesman said, "they have one rule for the Congo, and one rule for Nigeria." The sudden displeasure was ironic for, in the past, the United States has been considered one of the staunchest supporters of the federal government in its attempt to crush the secession of the Eastern Region, which now calls itself the Republic of Biafra...

The best indications Sunday were that federal troops continued to move slowly into secessionist Eastern Nigeria, pushing ahead steadily step by step but without any dramatic rout of the eastern forces. But best indications may not be very good in this civil war that is rending Africa's most populous country. The federal government refuses to allow any foreign correspondent anywhere near the battle lines or even the command headquarters. Diplomats say they have received only the sketchiest and vaguest of reports. And there is some hint of less than brisk, communication even between the federal government and its own troops on the remote bushland of the northern border of Biafra - the name that the Eastern Region has taken since its secession. So outsiders can only sift through the rare war communiques of the federal government, the claims made by Biafra Radio and the whispered gossip around town...

Americans were evacuated from the battle zones of Biafra Saturday as two tiny African armies fought in the rain in the Nigerian civil war. Unconfirmed reports indicated that federal troops had continued their advance into the secessionist state of Biafra, which had been the old Eastern Region of Nigeria before it seceded six weeks ago. The reports said that Ogaja, a key town in the northeastern corner of Biafra, had been captured and that the big university town of Nsukka in the northwest had been surrounded. Nsukka, by road, is 41 miles from Enugu, the capital of Biafra. The obvious federal plan is to capture Enugu and bring down its ruler, Lt. Col. C. Odumegwu Ojukwu. "Our orders are to get Ojukwu," a federal military spokesman said Saturday. "If we get him today, that's it..."

Federal troops have attacked the old Eastern Region in an effort to bring down the Biafran government of Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu. According to an announcement by Radio Nigeria Friday night, Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the federal military ruler, issued his orders for an invasion only after Eastern troops fired at federal troops along the northern border of Biafra. The federal announcement confirmed an earlier broadcast by Radio Biafra that a federal offensive had begun. The Biafrans claimed they had driven the federal troops back across the border. But the federal government, in turn, claimed its troops had penetrated Biafra and inflicted heavy casualties on the secessionist troops. Ironically, the fighting erupted on the eve of two major attempts to bring a peaceful settlement to the Nigerian crisis...

Informed sources revealed Wednesday that oil producers have defied the federal military government of Nigeria and paid royalties to the secessionist state of Biafra. The act provoked immediate retaliation. The sources said the federal government has imposed a total blockade on all oil shipments coming out of Biafra, which was the Eastern Region of Nigeria until it seceded May 30. The payment of the royalties - even though made under the threat of Biafra's military pressure - was a blow to the federal government. The move implied some form of international commercial recognition that the East was under the control of secessionist leader C. Odumegwu Ojukwu and not the federal government. But the blockade was a sharp blow to the oil producers who lose their markets in this period of a worldwide oil shortage caused by the Middle East crisis...

The blockade of the secessionist Republic of Biafra took a dramatic, dangerous turn Tuesday when the Nigerian navy announced it had fired a shell into the empty hold of a small Panamanian freighter found in forbidden waters. The shell was fired by a Nigerian patrol boat trying to prevent goods from entering and leaving the secessionist state of Biafra. The patrol boat fired into the 2,500-ton Rigel, which is registered by the Mara Bierta Shipping Line of Panama City, after the ship ignored four warning shots across its bow. No one was hurt. By the time the final shell struck, the Rigel had cut its engines but still had not stopped. It was reported that the captain, an Italian, was not on the bridge at the time. Naval officials said they fired at the Rigel because they found it leaving the Biafran port of Bonny Monday...

Grim and curious, thousands of Nigerians stood in the rain Monday under incongruous, carnival-colored African umbrellas and stared at the debris of the night of terror in downtown Lagos near police headquarters. The emotions of these bystanders were obviously the real target of the terrorists who set off two explosions on Sunday night, killing four persons and injuring 14. It seemed a classic case of terrorists trying to make the population shudder or even panic in fear. They had a measure of success. Though Nigerians in Lagos did not seem panicky and fearful, they did look quiet and uneasy, worried, even fretful. The explosions came a little more than a month after the old Eastern Region seceded from Nigeria and proclaimed itself the independent Republic of Biafra, which the federal military ruler, Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, has pledged to crush by force...

Tanzania's Guide For Africa - African leaders often fancy exalted titles, like "The Conquering Lion of Judah" or "Osegeyfo, the Redeemer," but Julius Nyerere, the president of Tanzania, allows his followers to call him only "Mwalimu," a simple Swahili word that means teacher. In a way, this illustrates Nyerere's penchant - perhaps his affectation - for simplicity, but it also reveals a good deal about his image of himself as leader. Nyerere sees himself as the teacher guiding, encouraging, gently pushing his impoverished, unskilled, hesitant people to a better life. The success of Tanzania depends at the moment on how well Nyerere does as a teacher, for he is in a sense his country's greatest resource. His brilliant reason and firm but gentle leadership put him several levels above his well-meaning though inexperienced and sometimes bumbling associates and lieutenants. He stands out clean and sharp and bright, like a Bix Beiderbecke solo on an old, routine record. The direction and mood of Tanzania these days is the direction and mood of Nyerere...

Nigeria stripped secessionist leader Lt. Col. C. Odumegwu Ojukwu of all titles, then kicked him out of the federal army, Saturday, crushing hope of a quick settlement between the federal government and the breakaway state of Biafra. "Rapprochement with Ojukwu is not possible," a government spokesman said. The latest action changed the actual state of affairs in Nigeria very little, for all reports from Biafra indicate that Ojukwu is in firm control of the region, with a federal title or without. The move impressed outsiders, however, as another sign of the mounting tension in Nigeria. The country has seemed close to civil war since the old Eastern Region seceded to become the independent republic of Biafra in May. Oil companies caught in this warlike tugging remained silent...

Ojukwu Tells Secessionist Nation Attack by Federal Troops Will Mean 'Total War' - Lt. Col. C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, military governor of secessionist Eastern Nigeria, told his people Friday night, "We have come to zero hour" and are about to be attacked by troops of the federal government of Nigeria. In a voice that seemed to quaver in anger, he warned that any federal invasion into the East will provoke him into "total war against Nigeria." Ojukwu's emotional words, broadcast from the Eastern capital of Enugu and monitored here, came exactly one month after the East seceded from the federation of Nigeria and proclaimed itself the independent republic of Biafra. Ojukwu told Biafrans he has conclusive proof that Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the federal military ruler, "and his northern bandits have now finalized their plans to attack us in our home..."

Peace Efforts of Outsiders Like Britain, Zambia Held Unlikely to Bar Civil War - A few outsiders like Britain and Zambia are trying to prevent civil war in Nigeria by diplomatic persuasion and maneuvering, but the odds seem against them. The federal military government of Nigeria seems determined to crush the secession of Eastern Nigeria by force if need be. But this does not stop the talk about peace. Almost a month has gone by since the Eastern Region seceded on May 30 and proclaimed itself the independent Republic of Biafra. Without war, there is always hope of peace. So the outsiders try - in a hesitant, uncertain way. Britain, for example, has sent Eric Norris, assistant secretary of state in the commonwealth office, to Nigeria this week, hoping he might discover some way to end the crisis without bloodshed...

Trade Pact Aims to Draw Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania Closer by Splitting Them a Bit - The new East African treaty of economic cooperation may bring Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania closer together someday by letting them split a little apart now. Stripped of all its flowery optimism, that is the significance of the treaty, which was signed by Presidents Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Milton Obote of Uganda and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania at a recent conference in Kampala, Uganda. In many ways, the treaty is a remarkable achievement, for it salvages the most it can from the old East African common market and lays down a realistic groundwork for a future market. East Africa has had a common market since British colonial days. But the market always helped Kenya more than the other two countries...

Middle East in Miniature - The flow of oil goes steadily onward in Nigeria despite the present secession crisis and the threat of war. The oil companies are caught in the eye of the trouble, for two-thirds of Nigeria's oil production comes from the east, the region that seceded from Nigeria last week and proclaimed itself the independent republic of Biafra. But so far neither Biafra nor the federal government has interfered with the production and export of oil. Under new federal rules, all tankers must now call at the federal port of Lagos before shipping to the east. The tankers stop outside the mouth of the harbor. A federal patrol boat pulls alongside. A naval officer climbs aboard the tankers. After a brief inspection, the officer gives it permission to move on to the east...

Makes Fools of Federal Military Ruler, Other Opponents in Nigerian Crisis - Lt. Col. C. Odumegwu Ojukwu is a roughly bearded young man with soft eyes and gentle tones and an unconcealed contempt for the men who oppose him in the present Nigerian crisis. There is a feeling in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, that all these Nigerian troubles with the secessionist state of Biafra would go away if only its leader, Ojukwu, would also go away. The feeling is false. But it is worth recording because it reveals one of the problems in the crisis - the federal rulers know in their bones that Ojukwu has contempt for them. Ojukwu never tries to conceal it. For example, in a recent news conference for three British newspapers and the Los Angeles Times, Ojukwu belittled Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon (he has since promoted himself to major general), the federal military ruler, as a man lacking intelligence, ability and control. The Ojukwu style of gentle but barbed contempt came through as he talked about Gowon...

Trek Through Former East Nigeria Filled With Maddening Obstacles, Newsmen Find - Agents of the breakaway state of Biafra have one main way of reaching the outside world - the 350-mile Enugu-to-Douala run. It is a tortuous, maddening race by helicopter, car, and plane on a route clogged with enormous obstacles, like rutted roads and pettifogging border officials. Isolation is one of the penalties paid by Biafra, the former Eastern Region of Nigeria, for secession. As part of its campaign to weaken the economy of Biafra, the federal government of Nigeria refuses to permit planes to fly in and out of the region. But Biafra wants its representatives rushing about Europe and the rest of Africa selling Biafra's case and soliciting business and recognition. They have to go out by the Enugu-to-Douala run. A London Times correspondent and I have just completed the run, a case study of the headaches and hazards of transportation and communication in some of the most remote, God-forsaken bush in all of Africa...

U.S. Officials Believe Nigeria Will Order Troops to Crush Secession of East Region - The hotels of Lagos are crammed this week with Americans evacuated from secessionist Biafra. It is hard to call them war refugees - young American mothers in flowery resort wear, tall, twisting teen-agers, fatcheeked, mischief-making kids, and infants squalling for a diaper change - but they are the most convincing sign in Nigeria today of the imminence of war. Despite attempts by the American Embassy to downgrade the significance of the evacuation of almost 1,000 women and children by a shuttling DC-6, it clearly means that U.S. officials believe Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the federal military ruler will soon order troops to invade Eastern Nigeria. That region seceded from the federation last week and proclaimed itself the independent republic of Biafra. For its part, the federal government, which has proclaimed its intent to crush the rebellion, refuses to give any hint of how it hopes to do so...

War Infatuation Breeds Casual Cruelty in Secessionist Eastern Area of Nigeria - The mood in the new secessionist state of Biafra is an odd blend of ugliness and boyish playfulness. The leaders of Biafra, once the Eastern region of Nigeria, feel their backs are up against the wall but, as their leader, Col. C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, put it in a recent interview, they are ready to defend themselves to the last man. These attitudes encourage a single-minded infatuation with war, an atmosphere ready to crackle with brutality and unreality. The mood of Biafra now reflects all this. I felt and saw the mood of Biafra the moment I stepped across the Niger River bridge from Asaba in Federal Nigeria to Onitsha in Biafra. A young, handsome Ibo wearing what looked like a prep school jacket and carrying a suitcase and a handbag, walked across the bridge at the same time...

Federal Leaders Plan Quick Victory but Endless Tribal Bloodshed May Lie Ahead - The federal military forces of Nigeria evidently hope to crush the rebellious state of Biafra with one swift march to Enugu, its capital. By classic military standards, they have every right to succeed, but few wars in Africa are fought in any classic military way. Instead of military victory, or defeat, the end result may be a nightmare of endless tribal bloodletting and chaos, much like the Congo. But, according to sources here, federal military leaders feel confident, perhaps overconfident, about their chances for quick victory, and that feeling will likely rule the next round of events in Nigeria. At the least, it means there will probably be no backing off from civil war by the federal government. On assessing the military situation, an observer has to remind himself continually about the meager numbers of soldiers involved. ..

Military Ruler Reportedly Determined to Destroy Secession of Area at Risk of War - All signs in Lagos Wednesday indicated that the federal military government of Nigeria is determined to destroy the secession of the Eastern Region, come what may, even a war and chaos. There seemed to be no bluff in the threat of Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, the federal military ruler, to try to crush the East, which proclaimed itself the independent republic of Biafra on Tuesday. According to reliable reports, a few thousand federal troops, almost all northerners, were waiting below the Benue River along the northwestern border of Biafra, hoping to strike at nearby Enugu, the capital of the East. Only a logistical buildup seemed to stand in the way of an attempt. Meanwhile, Gowon tried to harass the East by blockade and enforced isolation...

Officials Deny That Nation's New Reform Programs Are Fashioned After Peking's - When President Julius Nyerere nationalized the banks of Tanzania in February, the meaning of it all became quite clear to one European banker in neighboring Kenya, "Oh, my God," he said, "the Chinese have gotten to Julius." That exclamation, uttered in one form or another, has been the slogan of all those who see the roots of the new Tanzanian socialist program in a simplistic way - the sinister influence of Mao Tse-tung and his agents on innocent Nyerere. This notion is usually peddled by people outside Tanzania who have heard vaguely that there are some Chinese around. A visit to Tanzania and a round of talks with diplomats and Tanzanian officials drive home how ridiculous the notion is. The new Tanzanian socialist program belongs to Nyerere, not Mao. Of course, various people and events have influenced Nyerere in his thinking, and the Chinese are among them...

Nigeria, the largest country in Africa, split apart at dawn Tuesday when the Eastern region seceded and proclaimed itself the independent and sovereign Republic of Biafra. The act may mean civil war. Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, the head of the federal military government, denounced the secession "as an act of rebellion which will be crushed." He immediately ordered a general mobilization of troops and warned that Nigerians now face "considerable hardship and possible loss of life." There were unconfirmed reports that two battalions of federal troops have already moved toward the East. Gowon also ordered all foreign ships to stop calling at ports in the Eastern region. "Appropriate measures will be taken by the Nigerian navy," he added, thus hinting that he meant to blockade the East. According to reports from Enugu, the capital of the East, there was jubilation in the city as Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor of the East, proclaimed the secession...

Eastern Nigeria hurled scathing personal insults at the supreme military ruler of Nigeria Monday but still kept itself part of the nation, compounding the confusion in the Nigerian upheaval. Some outsiders had predicted that Eastern Nigeria would pick Monday to secede from Nigeria - the first anniversary of a massacre of eastern Ibo tribesmen in the North. Ibo resentment at the north is a root cause of the current crisis. But Lt. Col. C. O. Ojukwu, military governor of the east, confined himself to a verbal torrent against Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, the head of the federal government, but Nigeria took no action to secede. Ojukwu, in his statement from Enugu, described Gowon's weekend declaration of a state of emergency as "dishonest, cowardly, and farcical." Gowon, when he issued his proclamation, also divided the four regions of Nigeria into 12 states. The east was divided into three...

Nationalization of the banks, President Julius Nyerere's first dramatic move toward socialism, has hurt the economy of Tanzania in the last three months but not by very much. There are dangers to the economy in Nyerere's socialism but they lie in more subtle and less dramatic areas than in the economics of banking. In the long run, for example, the program may waste scarce managerial skills and may sap initiative. Nyerere insists that his nationalization policies are less important than his other new policies - his pleas for Tanzanians to work hard and be self-reliant, his attack on elitism, his plans for rural development, and his restructuring of the educational system. He says one reason for nationalization was to get his people in the mood for the rest of his plans. But the seizure of the banks and several other firms in early February was so sudden that it has attracted more attention. Since nationalization, foreign firms and individuals have stopped or decreased investing in Tanzania...

Reforms Aimed at Halting Production of Elite Graduates Who Ignore Masses - President Julius Nyerere, a former teacher, is trying to revolutionize education in Tanzania so that it stops producing an elite graduate who turns his nose up at peasants, dreams of a big Mercedes, specializes in Tudor history and refuses to work with his hands. These graduates, the usual product of African educational systems, cripple African development because they fill important jobs in the government and then neglect the masses in the countryside and their economic problems. Nyerere, in trying to change Tanzanian education, faces a formidable job. The officials in the Ministry of Education, who are assigned the task of implementing Nyerere's ideas, are all members of the elite who are proud of their education and who fail to understand what Nyerere is talking about. Failure to carry out his ideas on education could undermine Nyerere's whole new program of Tanzanian socialism. Nyerere wants his people to develop the country through hard work in agriculture. And he wants the results to benefit all of Tanzania, not just a privileged elite group in Dar es Salaam. To do this, the education system must infuse students with new attitudes about work and development...

Julius Nyerere's Drive for Economic Growth Is Exciting, but Will It Work? African governments, admiring the presidential palaces and flashy hotels in their capitals, usually blind themselves to the searing realities of their woeful economic development. But not Tanzania. Tanzania has embarked on a program that faces squarely the forces that suck vitality from African development - elitism, corruption, dependence, laziness, neglect of agriculture, and foolish schooling. Since African governments can not blind themselves forever, the Tanzanian experiment is exciting and significant. Other countries will some day have to take on the problems that Tanzania is taking on now. But the experiment has severe problems of its own. It is largely the work of one man - President Julius Nyerere - who can analyze the trouble of his country with coldness and incisiveness. His lieutenants lack that gift...

Undersecretary of State Nicholas D. Katzenbach is flitting through Africa these days on a frenetic trip that covers 12 countries in 18 days. Does the trip make sense? The answer seems to be that the trip has some limited significance for both the United States and Africa and that it probably made more sense to go than to stay at home. Katzenbach and the men around him say that the trip, which ends this coming weekend, has two objectives: 1 - To demonstrate American interest in African affairs. 2 - To educate the undersecretary about the continent. Katzenbach is the highest ranking American to visit Africa during the Johnson administration. His visit may persuade some heads of state that President Johnson is just as sympathetic to Africa as President Kennedy was. But he probably will fail to persuade Africans below the top level of government. For one thing, few Africans understand the importance of Katzenbach's job. In Kenya, for example, the press and radio continually call him the undersecretary of state for African affairs...

General China, Once Reviled by Whites, Wins Respect of Sort Given Old Soldiers - General China, whose name once provoked revulsion and contempt from white men here, has just published his memoirs, like any old respected soldier. The event was another step in the rehabilitation of the image of the Mau Mau. Ten years ago, or even five years ago, it would have been inconceivable for General China to have launched his memoirs at a reception attended by ministers, ambassadors and respected publishers. General China, whose real name is Waruhiu Itote, was a leader of the Mau Mau fighters in the forests of Mt. Kenya from 1952 to 1954. Mau Mau had an image of bestiality and terror then. To Europeans and most Africans here, and in fact to most people throughout the world, Mau Mau meant a barbaric uprising by Kikuyu tribesmen in the 1950s against the white rulers of Kenya, an uprising that overstepped the normal bounds of insurrection because of stark primitiveness, the obscene savagery, the wild-eyed ruthlessness of the heathen natives. The image was painted vividly by Hollywood and Robert Ruark. Of course, the image had to change somewhat when Kenya became independent in 1963. After all, the new president, Jomo Kenyatta, had been convicted by the colonial courts of planning and leading the Mau Mau uprising...