Word: laos
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First to be knocked over by the fall of South Viet Nam would obviously be Laos and Cambodia. Little Laos, "Land of the Million Elephants"-or the Million Irrelevants, as Americans on the scene put it-lies bloodied and paralyzed by a Geneva neutralist agreement that has resulted only in chaos. The pro-Communist Pathet Lao and the neutralist-rightist armies fire dutifully at each other amid the gigantic burial urns on the Plain of Jars, usually trying not to hit each other but still taking a daily toll of human life. Recently, gunfire erupted one night in the backwater...
...that North Viet Nam does not have its troubles. Ho Chi Minh's Communist Lao Dong party is divided between its pro-Moscow and pro-Peking factions, and "Uncle" Ho has his hands full keeping things in balance. Rice rations were trimmed last month for the third time in a year, sugar grows increasingly short, meat is a luxury available only to the army and select workers -and then a ration of only three-quarters of a pound per week. Even coal and steel production, of which Hanoi was once so proud, is lagging. And though Ho Chi Minh...
...Laos, South Viet Nam reopened its embassy in Vientiane, which it had closed in 1962 as a protest against Laotian recognition of North Viet Nam. Neutralist Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma announced that he was pleased, but he had little else to smile about. In the endless fighting that goes on in the balled-up little country between its three ruling factions, the rightist forces last week accused the pro-Communist Pathet Lao of launching yet another attack. Talks were under way aimed at arranging a conference this week between the faction leaders, namely Souvanna Phouma, his half brother Pathet Lao...
...supreme show of gall, the Pathet Lao demanded henceforth to be cut in on U.S. aid, such as rice, which the U.S. airdrops to refugees and soldiers of the rightist and neutralist factions. Why shouldn't the proCommunists, asked the Pathet Lao, get their fair share...
...damages, Sihanouk called the riot "inexcusable but comprehensible," said that the mob was goaded by "the repeated humiliations inflicted on their country by the Anglo-Saxon powers" (total U.S. aid to Cambodia since 1954: $340 million). In a calculated slap at the West, Sihanouk went on to discuss neighboring Laos in a way that all but recognized the Communist Pathet Lao as its real government, also announced that he would soon send a delegation to Hanoi to negotiate a border-demarcation agreement with Communist North Viet Nam. Since South Viet Nam-and not North -borders on Cambodia, any such treaty...