Word: abramovic
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...capital city of Vientiane last week. Soviet Ambassador Aleksandr Abramov was telling whoever would listen that "peace"-meaning Western retreat-is necessary in Laos because, should hostilities start again. Red China would enter the fray to ensure a Communist victory. For the West, it represents a Hobson's choice: surrender Laos by default, or be prepared to send in troops to hold at least the Mekong River line as a bulwark for what is left of free Southeast Asia...
...TIME Correspondent James Wilde got a rare chance to see for himself. The Russians have been busily wooing Prince Souvanna Phouma, 59, who was Premier of Laos until he fled to exile in Cambodia last December. Fortnight ago, over dinner and a bottle of vodka at Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Abramov's house in the Cambodian capital of Pnompenh, Prince Souvanna agreed to visit the rebel stronghold. He took along his old friend, Correspondent Wilde, who flew out last week with Souvanna and filed an eye-witness account...
...trip had all the trappings of a state visit, all the secrecy of a Communist plot. At Pnompenh airport, Ambassador Abramov and Chinese Communist Ambassador Wang Yu-ping huddled about the ramp of the twin-engined Ilyushin-14 warned that the plane would have to fly "very high" and be blacked out. Reason: "U.S. jets" might try to shoot it down. At Hanoi that night. North Viet Nam Premier Pham Van Dong turned out at the runway with a cluster of pretty little girls bearing flowers, then drove Prince Souvanna off to the state guesthouse in a long cortege...
Showdown. Kong Le began by reinforcing his garrison with 2,000 Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas from the nearby jungles. Then he turned for further aid to his good friend, Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Abramov. Helpfully, Abramov flew in six 105-mm. howitzers and eight 120-mm. mortars as well as a batch of North Vietnamese to teach the Laotians how to use their new weapons. At his stronghold to the south, Savannakhet, General Phoumi countered by convening most of the members of the National Assembly. They voted Prince Souvanna out of office and named as the new Premier Boun...
Only a week after he arrived amid elaborate ceremonies as the first Russian en voy to Laos, Ambassador Aleksandr Abramov sat in shirtsleeves in a seedy hotel room in Vientiane and fumed. King Savang Vatthana had pointedly declined to invite him to present his credentials. Neutralist Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma canceled the important bad ceremony, in which Buddhist priests were to tie a lucky string around Abramov's wrist. And Souvanna announced the "technical arrest" of Paratroop Captain Kong Le, Vientiane's military boss, on the ground that the expansive reception he staged for Abramov had been unauthorized...