Word: laos
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Both the talk and the war monument were premature. The Communist-led rebels still held most of north central Laos, and the road into their lair was studded with land mines, freshly imported from Red China. Though Boun Oum's generals predicted all-out victory "within a week," most foreign observers on the scene predicted a negotiated truce. Late last week King Savang Vatthana, an easygoing monarch who prefers to remain above politics, reluctantly left his palm-fringed home town of Luangprabang, flew to Vientiane to convene his council of ministers. Purpose: to see if he could devise some...
...steady Soviet airlift of supplies from North Viet Nam. He concentrated on training his five-battalion force, made up of paratroops, villagers and recruits from the army posts he has captured. He claimed to be only a "neutralist" himself-though he coordinates his attacks with Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas...
Gaining. The spectacle of one pro-Communist captain with a nucleus of only 300 paratroopers standing off a 29,000-man army nurtured and trained by the U.S. was bad enough. But Western diplomats in Laos feared that Kong Le was actually gaining strength, picking up new recruits in the villages as well as seasoned units of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao guerrilla movement. The government of Premier Boun Oum was even talking of moving south out of Vientiane, which was won from Kong Le just last month...
Missing Town. Reports from the remote battlefront were hard as ever to decipher. Information Minister Bouavan Norasingh called in newsmen one day and announced that "three battalions of Russians, Pathet Lao and Viet Minh" had just invaded from North Viet Nam near the town of Ban Le. But when pressed, Information Minister Bouavan had to admit that he had no idea where Ban Le was. All that seemed to be going on for sure was a buildup by both sides around the Plaine des Jarres, the strategic central plateau captured by pro-Communist Captain Kong Le a week earlier with...
...since the effect of the control commission, if it works, will be to freeze the status quo, Khrushchev doubtless wanted to grab what he could before that day came. In Kong Le he had a tough fighting man sitting on the country's crossroads. In the Pathet Lao, he had a supple organization that keeps gaining ground in the back country, no matter what government is in power. Even when it achieves the first goal of restoring peace, the U.S. will face the long-range challenge of reversing that losing trend...