81. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Cleveland) to Secretary of State Rusk1
SUBJECT
- Parliamentary Democracy in the Congo
A phone talk I have just had (after consultation with and in agreement with USUN) with Ralph Bunche of the UN Secretariat does nothing to decrease our uncertainty or allay our concern about the prospects for the Parliamentary session which is supposedly just about to get under way in the Congo.
Bunche says that the UN frankly doesn’t know what is going to happen; they hope that a “government of reconciliation” will come out of it but they are in no position to predict it, let alone guarantee it. The parliamentarians have mostly not arrived (as of 5:30 p.m. Saturday); Stanleyville’s contribution to the democratic process has still not put in an appearance. “Eight or nine” members from Kivu are already lodged in the Lovanium University buildings under UN protection; a group has come with Kalonji, but has refused to stay at the University, preferring to camp outside.
I asked Bunche why the UN had pressed so consistently for a meeting of Parliament, given the almost complete uncertainty about the probable outcome. He said they had almost insoluble problems in trying to build an effective government administration, with internal security force to match, under a government which the UN couldn’t acknowledge formally because it had never been legitimated through the only applicable constitutional process, acceptance by the Parliament under the Loi Fondamentale.2If things went badly and no “government of reconciliation” came into being, the UN would have to “use what force we have to try and retrieve the situation.” In other words, their pressing for a meeting of Parliament had nothing to do with a judgment about the outcome of such a meeting, but was the result of a conviction that the present informal governmental arrangements were no longer tolerable. (A better argument, which he did not use, is that a further long hiatus in setting up a central government with some color of legitimacy would [Page 163] freeze the present separatist tendencies and set up the possibility of another Laos.)
The nose count of possible parliamentarians, to which I referred in our conversation earlier today, is attached in an analysis by AF (Tab A).3 You will note the estimate that in the Chamber of Deputies, 45 pro-Gizengists are ranged against 53 opposed to Gizenga, with the remainder dead or uncertain. A majority of the 137 members would be 69.
While Kasavubu has issued (on July 5) a decree convening the Legislative Chambers at Léopoldville on July 15th, it is clear that this does not mean the Parliament was ever expected to meet on the 15th. The same Kasavubu decree says that “the former Presidents of the Chambers shall agree upon the actual date of the first meeting of the Chambers.” (Tab B).4
Given the state of confusion, which is good material for either an opera bouffe or a tragedy depending on events yet unknown and roles still unplayed, I see no alternative to doing what Godley has recommended from the field: sitting tight, watching developments with great care, and planning to scuttle the immediate parliamentary session if things don’t seem to be going well from our point of view. One basis for doing this might be for Kasavubu to accuse Gizenga of bad faith in view of the arrival in Stanleyville (now confirmed) of eight Soviet diplomats and a ton of Russian luggage, not all of it caviar.
I asked Ralph Bunche to let USUN know of any developments that substantially change the present picture as he described it, and we have instructed USUN (Tab C)5 to keep in the very closest touch with the Secretariat personnel directly concerned with dealing with the Congo operation from day to day.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 770G.00/7–1561. Confidential. Drafted and initialed by Cleveland.↩
- The Loi Fondamentale was passed by the Belgian Chamber and Senate and signed by King Baudouin on May 19, 1960. For text, see Gerard-Libois and Verhaegen, Congo 1960, pp. 108–135.↩
- The attachments are not printed. Tab A is a July 7 memorandum from Vance to Williams.↩
- U.N. doc. S/4841/Add.3, July 6, contained the text of Kasavubu’s order No. 41 convening Parliament on July 15.↩
- Telegram 73 to USUN, July 14.↩