Word: laotians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Time for Anti-Thaw. Fact is, as Peking well knows, that the U.S. has no bases in Laos and U.S. "troops" there consist of 70 men supervising the supply of light World War II U.S. weapons to the royal Laotian army, plus 100 army officers on inactive duty assigned to a French military training mission...
...north of it (China), Communists to the east of it (North Viet Nam), and Communists inside it (the Pathet Lao). Only 18 months ago it seemed to be slipping inexorably toward Red rule. As the result of a queer, credulous armistice with its own Communist rebels, the Laotian government reserved two of its Cabinet posts for Communists and agreed to absorb two battalions of Communist rebels into the royal Laotian army...
Cleft Stick. The Reds struck back. Despite the monsoon rains that were pouring down, sweeping away airstrips and flooding the valleys, Communist-led Black Thai tribesmen, trained and equipped in North Viet Nam, last month invaded the remote northern Laotian provinces of Phongsaly and Samneua. Slipping expertly through the suffocating jungle, the Red guerrillas surprised one small Laotian army garrison after another, inflicted 300 casualties on government forces and captured several villages lying astride the classic invasion route into Laos from the battle-renowned village of Dienbienphu...
...Laotian capital of Vientiane, Phoui ordered a roundup of top Laotian Communists, including the biggest of them all, Red Prince Souphanouvong, nephew of Laos' ailing, 74-year-old king. The royal Laotian army, though hampered by a communications system that in forward jungle areas consists of runners carrying messages in cleft sticks, slowly succeeded in reconquering most of the lost villages. Early last week Vientiane reported that the bulk of the Communist forces had apparently withdrawn, leaving behind 1,000 men "to conduct political activity and prepare for the next action by Communist troops...
Militarily, the conflict in Laos was strictly small bore. Why, then, had Red China wheeled up such heavy political artillery? The minimum Communist ambition may be to frighten Phoui into accepting return of the international control commission and readmitting the Laotian Reds into his government. But this seemed hardly worth a fuss that might queer Khrushchev's trip to the U.S.-unless, as some British diplomats speculate, it was Mao's way of reminding Khrushchev that Red China does not want any thaw in U.S.-Russian relations. The U.S. State Department, however, implicitly accused Moscow of complicity...