>The assassination on January 16
>of Kabila
...
> in the best of circumstances, may create the
>possibility for an effective peacekeeping mission by the UN—something that
>Kabila opposed.
History suggests that Kabila not Pugliese is right about UN intervention. UN envoy Conor Cruise O'Brien (no communist he) was sacked for saying what any sane person knew at the time: the United Nations acted to undermine the democratically elected government of newly independent Congo, promoting a secessionist movement in Katanga and undermining radical leader Patrice Lumumba. In his memoirs My Life and Themes O'Brien says that at the time he assumed that UN chief Dag Hammerskjold had merely failed to save Lumumba from the assassination by the armed forces. Surveying the literature on the issue since, O'Brien was convinced that Hammerskjold had ordered UN troops to look the other way while Lumumba was beaten and killed. His assessment, like that of the Unesco History of Africa (1935 to the Present, ed Ali Mazrui) was that the United Nations had acted as an imperialist power in the Congo, securing a safe (ie West-leaning) government.
-- James Heartfield