Word: lao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
EXCEPT for occasional Communist patrols that stole to within a few tantalizing miles of Luangprabang and Vientiane, there was little military movement in Laos last week. Exhausted after their defeat by Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops on the Plain of Jars, General Vang Pao's U.S.-supported Meo guerrillas retired into their mountains to rest and regroup. Almost nothing stirred on the ground in northern Laos, except for some 20,000 Meo, many of them families of Pao's warriors, who began "walking out" of their hillside enclaves towards the Thai border and relative safety from...
Trouble on Capitol Hill could seriously crimp the Administration's already narrow room for maneuver in Laos-a fact that Hanoi and the Pathet Lao seem to appreciate thoroughly. In an intriguing and unexpected diplomatic move, Prince Souphanouvong, the Pathet Lao leader, last week offered his half brother Prince Souvanna Phouma, head of the neutralist government, a peace proposal. It suggested talks about a standstill cease-fire and a conference of all Lao factions aimed at restoring a new coalition government in Vientiane. There was, of course, one precondition: a U.S. withdrawal from Laos. Premier Souvanna Phouma said that...
Policy Puzzle. Numbers, numbers, numbers-but is there any safety in them? Nixon's statement went a long way toward dispelling the notion that the U.S. was moving secretly toward a new Viet Nam. But it also made clear that the U.S. has no clear-cut objectives in Laos except, in the President's words, "to protect American lives in Viet Nam and to preserve a precarious but important balance in Laos." An uneasy balance had been maintained from July 1962 until last fall, when Laotian government troops surprised themselves and most observers by pushing the North Vietnamese...
...spring of 1946, an American OSS veteran named James Thompson paid a call on the governor of Thailand's Nong Khai province. "Come upstairs," said the governor. "I have a Lao prince you might like to meet." The governor's guest was Prince Souphanouvong, then a leader of the embryo Laotian independence movement and now titular head of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao. Souphanouvong asked Thompson for pledges of U.S. support against the French colonialists who were then re-establishing their control over Laos. Their talk was, almost certainly, the first contact between American officials and independence-minded...
After 1955, the Pathet Lao (with heavy North Vietnamese support) tightened their hold on northeast Laos. The Royal Laotian Army-trained by U.S. advisers along conventional lines-proved incapable of fighting a counterinsurgency war. By 1959, a mysterious mission known as the Programs Evaluation Office (PEO) was functioning in Vientiane. Ostensibly an arm of the U.S. aid mission, its actual function was to oversee training of the Laotian army, and it had almost total control of all U.S. aid to Laos. The money, however, failed to shore up the Vientiane government. A new Geneva accord signed in 1962 called...