Word: laos
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Hardly had the U.S. sat down again at the peace talks in Geneva last week, on the hopeful assumption that a cease-fire was at last in effect in Laos, when the news arrived from Ban Hat Bo, a village near the Mekong River in central Laos. After a heavy mortar barrage that lasted two hours, 1,000 Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese soldiers had attacked to a frenzied blowing of bugles. The Ban Hat Bo garrison fled, along with their five U.S. military advisers. One of them noted bitterly that the Communist assault, with its tooting bugles...
...Royal Laotian Army, after it fell back from Padong a week earlier, would now be able to consolidate its hold on stronger positions and stop the Communist drive. The truth was that morale was so badly shattered that the army probably could not win a battle anywhere in Laos. The Pathet Lao claimed to hold "four-fifths of Laos" (a better estimate: about half), and it seemed determined to keep gobbling up more while talking peace at Geneva...
...from Nice, where he has been sunning himself, came the U.S.'s favorite Premier, Prince Boun Oum. From Geneva, looking as relaxed as a pair of tourists, came Russia's favorite Premier, "neutralist" Prince Souvanna Phouma, and his brother, "Red Prince" Souphanou-vong, who commands the Pathet Lao. Prince Souvanna greeted his rival warmly and talked in friendly style about getting together on a "broad-based coalition government." The way things were going back home, one diplomat cracked, "Boun Oum will be lucky to get the Education Ministry." After two days, about the only thing the princes could...
...Vienna conference, Khrushchev was tough on Berlin, urging in a written memo that the West immediately sign a German peace treaty. Last week the Soviet Union charged that the forthcoming meetings of the West German Parliament in Berlin were "provocations endangering peace." Khrushchev seemed a bit more cooperative about Laos. In the joint communique issued after the talks, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed on the need for an "effective ceasefire." But last week it was apparent that Khrushchev would implement those words in his own good time. When the pro-Communist Pathet Lao violated the cease-fire by seizing Padong village...
...which had made the cease-fire its only small condition for attending the conference, had no ready counter. The pro-Western Laotian Premier, Prince Boun Oum, who has been sitting on the Riviera doing nothing in particular, was not much help. "The Pathet Lao are the strongest on all fronts," he wailed. "They will capture Vientiane, Luangprabang, Savannakhet, anything they want. Nothing can stop them." Prince Boun Oum hoped to get together with his rival princes to plead for peace. But Prince Souvanna was openly contemptuous. "Boun Oum is playing hide-and-seek," he said. "If we would...