Word: abhay
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Laos' pro-Western Premier, Prince Boun Oum, called a rare press conference in Vientiane last week, but never said a word. Smiling and silent, he sat for an hour while Education Minister Nhouy Abhay, who is also the poet laureate of Laos, chattered on. In mid-conference, Nhouy casually remarked that the government had asked help from the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in dealing with the Communist-backed insurrection in Laos. Reporters were startled, and Nhouy hastily explained: "We simply wanted to reassure our people that we have friendly nations with us. Foreigners in Vientiane have been digging trenches...
...that were not bad enough, last week the garrison of Vientiane rebelled. Captain Kong Le, who was away at the front, could do nothing about it. The new garrison commander, Colonel Kouprasith Abhay, began purging leftists from the garrison forces. Equably, Souvanna remarked: "We prefer someone who really commands." But when Kong Le rushed back to Vientiane and pushed Kouprasith's forces two miles out of town, the imperturbable Souvanna let that pass too. "This is a military matter," said...
Those who hold that politics in Laos is already complicated enough had to resign themselves to a new surprise last week. To the world at large, it seemed that courtly Kou Abhay, 67, was the new Premier of the kingdom of Laos. But the man who was really running things was Kou's younger brother...
...taken over unstable little Laos, only to be dismissed in a hurry when the U.S. and the U.N. decided that despite Communist threats from neighboring North Viet Nam, the world would be safer if Laos stayed neutral (TIME, Jan. 18). What about the army now, someone asked the brothers Abhay. It was the younger brother who answered. "The army must serve," he said grandly. "That is its basic and only role...
Overnight, out went the military junta, in came a compromise civilian Cabinet headed by one of the King's aging advisers, 68-year-old Kou Abhay. It was, everyone in Vientiane delightedly agreed, a truly Laotian solution: though Phoui himself had been ousted, his neutralist policy, at least for the time being...