The Presidential Years 303
also flourished, with hundreds of African and Asian students attending Yugo-
slav universities thanks to scholarships.^200
Returning from his three-month journey to Indonesia, Burma, India, Cey-
lon, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, and Greece, Tito was hailed triumphantly
in Belgrade. About three hundred thousand people, from workers to school-
children, were conveyed by buses or trucks to flank the motorcade.^201 This
“success” strengthened his conviction that the non-aligned countries should
collaborate with the great powers to solve the burning issues of the contempo-
rary world. In an international atmosphere marked by rising tensions, when
more or less open threats of nuclear conflict were coming out of Washington
and Moscow, he considered this sort of collective effort to preserve peace
extremely urgent. When the summit between Khrushchev and Eisenhower
failed miserably in May 1960 after the Soviet decision to shoot down an Amer-
ican spy aircraft, Tito blamed the United States for the breakdown. At the
same time, he asked for a more active role in international relations for non-
aligned countries and for the United Nations, stressing that it was not possible
to leave the responsibility for the fate of the world to the great powers. He
expressed this idea a month later in a press release at the close of Nasser’s visit
to Yugoslavia, and reiterated it at the Fifteenth General Assembly of the UN,
when he met leaders from Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Ghana. On that occa-
sion, they addressed an appeal to Eisenhower and Khrushchev, inviting them
to resume mutual contact and together solve the world’s current problems.^202
For the first time, the Non-Aligned Movement passed from words to action.
Tito was radiant.^203
Although worried about the effect that vaccinations against tropical diseases
could have on his health, at the end of February 1961 Tito embarked on another
trip, this time to Africa, which had been hastily organized to beat Khrushchev
to the draw. In the spring of that year, Khrushchev in turn had decided to visit
several countries on the African continent.^204 At the start of Tito’s journey,
he received information about the brutal assassination of Patrice Lumumba,
the heart of the mutiny against Belgian colonial rule in Congo. Tito, who
was on the side of the rebels in their fight against colonialism, started to
think about a stronger future policy than he had initially intended. Outraged
over Lumumba’s fate (he had been shot, dismembered, and dissolved in acid
by his enemies), he declared that this was “the worst crime of contemporary
history,” and that his death was to be ascribed mostly to the UN and its secre-
tary general, Dag Hammerskjöld, who was guilty of not having protected
Lumumba sufficiently. In Tito’s view it was urgent to summon a meeting of
“neutral” (non-aligned) countries in Cairo as soon as possible: “Call Abdel