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Confronted by two News of the World correspondents, Mr. Noyes Thomas and Mr. Graham Stanford, who related to him with passion the sights of human misery and degradation they had witnessed in Nigerian-occupied Ibibio territory, notably at Ikot Ekpene, Lord Shepherd manifested some surprise and shock. But within a short time, again the centre of attraction, he was delightedly waving to the crowd (Biafran agents in the town later reported many were Yoruba soldiers in mufti) and even got himself into a situation where he was observed greeting a choir which had been enjoined to serenade him with the psalm 'The Lord is my Shepherd'. Comparisons with Lord Runciman's mission to Czechoslovakia in 1938 and that ridiculous earl's performance at Petrovice were unavoidable. 02

The Peace Conferences In Lagos he made more statements of a strongly pro-Nigeria ffavour and departed with any chances of a negotiated settle ment through his mediation in shreds and tatters.

The effectiveness of British diplomacy in the issue was at an end, and despite subsequent claims of great victories won

in the corridors of Lagos, of concessions, of tentative agreements and lots more besides, the British Government has subsequently been able to affect by not one jot or tittle the chances of peace in Nigeria, except perhaps that her continued policy has moved them even farther away. Yet observers were left wondering why Britain of all countries, with a fund of fine diplomats of the calibre of Sir Humphrey Trevelyan who acted so shrewdly over Aden, felt itself obliged when confronted with a situation of the utmost delicacy like the Nigeria-Biafra war to confine her efforts to using the services of Lord Shepherd who is not a professional diplomat.

The next move came from Africa. Emperor Haile Selassie of, Ethiopia had for months headed the six-nation Committee on Nigeria of the Organization of African Unity, a committee which had remained mute since the previous winter when it had been warned off visiting Biafra by General Gowon and had meekly succumbed. After contacting the other five heads of state, those of Liberia, Congo Kinshasa, Cameroon, Ghana and Niger Republic, the Emperor convened a conference in the capital of the last named country, Niamey. The host was the President of Niger, Hamani Diori. The meeting was opened on Monday 15 July, and was attended by General Gowon on the following day. Hardly had he ffown home in the afternoon, than the committee issued an invitation to Colonel Ojukwu to come and present his case.

The news reached Biafra first by radio, but the official invitation took longer, being delivered through the offices of President Bongo of Gabon that night. The next day, Wednesday, Colonel Ojukwu held a long-scheduled press conference at Aba, during which he proposed two means of getting food into Biafra to alleviate the human suffering. One was via a sea and river route up the Niger River to the Port of Oguta, still firmly in Biafran hands. The other was for the internationalization of Port Harcourt under neutral control, and for a ten-mile-

wide corridor from there up to the front-line positions north of the town where the Biafran Red Cross would take over. He was asked at the same conference if he would go to Niamey, but he ruefully shook his head and replied that though he would like to he felt the military situation would not allow it.

Later that evening he had cause to change his mind. A message arrived outlining the availability of speedy transport, and after a hurried meeting with the Executive Council, he and a

small group of delegates left shortly after midnight on the morning of 18 July. They landed at Libreville before dawn, were spotted by Mr. Bruce Oudes, a knowing Canadian correspondent on African affairs who had got a tip-off, and the story broke. After breakfast with President Bongo, Colonel Ojukwu flew north in the private jet of President Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, who had laid the aircraft at his disposal.

Addressing the committee, Colonel Ojukwu brought the full force of his advocacy and personality into play. The proposals for one or two mercy corridors by land or sea were reiterated, The Biafran case was stated. The committee, three of whose members represented governments previously hostile to Biafra, indicated their assent, which somewhat dismayed the Nigerian delegation.

On the Friday Colonel Ojukwu left Niamey and flew to Abidjan to see President Houphouet-Boigny and they,had talks in private. On Saturday he returned to Biafra, having left Professor Eni Njoku in Niamey to head the Biafran delegation. On the Sunday he held another press conference, this time a relaxed affair in a garden in Owerri, during which he expressed cautious optimism that the forthcoming peace conference at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the most important outcome of his Niamey visit, might produce results.

Meanwhile at Niamey the two delegations discussed relief aid, since the beginning of July a subject of growing concern to the world at large. Various criteria for a relief corridor were agreed upon, but when these criteria came to be applied to the various proposals so far made, it became clear that the Biafran proposal for a river-route was more feasible, cheaper, could carry more bulk in less time, and contained less strategic disadvantage to either side and a greater variety of safeguards

against abuse than the Nigerian proposal for a land corridor in the north from Enugu to Awgu. When this became apparent the Nigerian delegation backtracked fast, and it was while ex-

plaining why suddenly all the agreed criteria were unacceptable that the Nigerian leader Allison Ayida produced his viewpoint on starving children quoted in the next chapter: 'Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it on the rebels.'

From that point Nigeria went steadily backwards on the question of the permissibility of relief aid reaching Biafra, and subsequent minor concessions had to be wrung out, not by British Government pressure or advocacy, but by a growing wave of hostile world opinion stemming from the people in the streets. Nevertheless, an agenda for Addis Ababa was agreed, the order this time being reversed to suit the Nigerians: political settlement first, ceasefire second.

The Addis Ababa conference convened on Monday 29 July. Colonel Ojukwu had left Biafra the previous night and flown straight to the Ethiopian capital, this time with a bigger delegation and in a bigger jet, also provided by the President of the Ivory Coast. Predictably General Gowon refused to attend, or was prevented by advisers aware the contrast could hardly be flattering.

The first meeting, to hear the opening addresses by the two delegate leaders, was an open one, with representatives of every African head of state, and some of the heads themselves, the whole diplomatic corps of Addis Ababa, scores of observers and a host of pressmen present. Chief Enahoro, sought to have the press excluded, particularly the television cameras. The move failed, and he contented himself with a twelve-minute speech.

Colonel Ojukwu rose. He began by whal sounded like a plea for the Biafran people on humanitarian grounds. After four paragraphs he revealed that he was quoting direct from the speech Haile Selassie had made to the League of Nations in

1936 over the rape of Abyssinia by the Fascists. The point was not lost. He continued to speak for one hour and ten minutes,, describing the history of the Biafran people from its earliest days, the persecution, rejection, separation and sub.

sequent suffering. When he sat down, he became one of the few men in the world to receive from a predominantly diplomatic gathering a standing ovation. In seventy minutes Biafra had ceased to belong to Nigeria, or Africa, or the British or the Commonwealth. It had become a world issue. Colonel Ojukwu at thirty-four had become a world figure, an accolade translated into press terms twenty-four days later when his face featured on the cover of Time magazine.

But the Addis Ababa conference got bogged down after the glitter of publicity had died away. Like its predecessors it became lost in a quagmire of delays, stalling, intransigence and ill-will. In all it sat for over five weeks, but world attention, the only thing that might have given it stimulus, swung away to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The Nigerian delegation again had an aim in stalling. Cease- fire was no longer a live issue as on 47 August the Nigerian Third Division crossed the Imo River and threatened Aba, the largest city remaining to the Biafrans. By this time the attitude of the American gun-runner Wharton appeared to have changed. South of Aba Biafran soldiers defended on two bullets per man per day, attacked on five. The ammunition planes broke down, turned back, jettisoned their cargoes over the sea. Despite terrible Nigerian casualties Aba fell on 4 September 1968.

Soon all eyes were on the Heads of State conference of the Organization of African Unity scheduled for 14 September in Algiers. From Lagos frantic messages went out to the commander of the Third Division that Owerri must fall by then, or Uli airport. African states friendly to Biafra let her know that in preparation for Algiers British and American diplomacy was working overtime behind the scenes to persuade Africa that Biafra was finished. Considerable pressure, not excluding financial inducements, was repeatedly brought to bear. It worked.

The agenda committee of the Summit Conference, meeting in Algiers as from 8 September left Nigeria-Biafra off the agenda. The conference met on 14 September. After an abortive effort to take Uli airport, the Third Division launched an attack towards Owerri on 12 September. Still short of arms

and ammunition (the American gun-runner had been fired, but an alternative route had not been completely set up) the Biafrans fought with their usual handful of bullets against a spearhead of British Saladin armoured cars.

Owerri fell on 16 September. On the following day the Algiers meeting passed by thirty-two votes to four a hastily-appended resolution calling on the Biafrans to cooperate with the Nigerians in restoring the territorial integrity of the Federation: in other words to surrender.

In doing so the organization that prides itself on being the repository of the conscience of Africa washed its hands of the biggest conscientious issue in the continent. It was the nadir of Biafra's fortunes, military and diplomatic. At that time and for the succeeding weeks it was hard to find a single voice prepared to say Biafra was not completely finished. It took a hundred days before the world realized Biafra was stiff alive, still fighting.

By that time the situation had changed in most of its aspects. In Biafra there had been a re-surge of morale, of confidence, an increase in the amount of aid coming in or expected. Biafran troops were counter-attacking heavily for the first time in the war. Several nations, by-passing Britain, had declared that they intended actively to seek a means of bringing peace. In Nigeria an agreement with Russia had been signed that opened the door wide to Soviet infiltration of all walks of Nigerian life. In the North there were growing rumbles of discontent from the Emirs, dissatisfied with the government by minority-tribe civil servants who could not fulfil their promises. In the West there had been riots, shootings, mass arrests. In America Mr. Nixon had been elected.

The failure of the diplomacy was the failure not so much of the Nigerian front-men whose concern with preserving their own careers was predictable, but the failure of those able to bring pressure to bear to do so. Never once did the Nigerian delegations give an indication that their basic conviction, that a solution through war was feasible and attainable, had been shaken, nor did their supporters once seek to persuade them away from that conviction. The chance was there and it was thrown away.

13. The Question of Genocide.

GENOCIDE is an ugly word. It is the name given to the biggest crime man is capable of. What constitutes genocide in the modern world? What degree of violence offered towards a people justifies the use of the word? What degree of intent is necessary to justify the description? After years of study, some of the world's best legal brains assisted in drawing up the definition written into the United Nations Convention on Genocide adopted on 9 December 1948. Article Two specifiesIn the present Convention genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a. Killing of members of the group; b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the

group; c, Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calcu-

lated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article One states that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or war is a crime under international law, and Article Four makes plain that constitutional rulers, public officials or private individuals may be held responsible.

Obviously, in time of war men get killed, and as they belong to a national ethnical, racial or religious group this paragraph is perhaps too wide to be practicable. It is the use of the phrase 'with intent' that separates the usual casualties inflicted during war from the crime of genocide. The killing party must be shown to have had, or to have developed, intent to destroy, and the victims must be a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

There are two other points about genocide that have become habitually accepted in law: one is that intent 6a behalf

of the Head of State of the inflicting party need'not be proved. An individual general can direct his troops to commit genocide, and the Supreme Commander is held responsible if he cannot control his armed forces. Secondly, the deliberate decimation of the leadership cadres of a racial group, calculated to leave that group without the cream of its educated manpower, can constitute genocide even if the majority of the population is left alive as a helpless mass of semi-literate peasantry. The society may then be presumed to have

been emasculated as a group.

The Biafran charges against the Nigerian Government and armed forces rests on their behaviour in five fields: the pogroms of the North, the West and Lagos in 1966; the behaviour of the Nigerian Army towards the civilian population they encountered during the course of the war; the behaviour of the Nigerian Air Force in selection of its targets; the selective killings in various captured areas of chiefs, leaders, adminis. trators, teachers, technicians; and the allegedly deliberate imposition of famine, which was predicted in advance by foreign experts and which during 1968 carried away an estimated

500,000 children between the ages of one and ten years.