Word: laotians
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Optimists had predicted that the 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...
...hope did not last long. Even before Kennedy spoke, Russian-supplied guns opened up on the small Laotian village of Padong, high on a 6,000-ft. ridge in Communist-held territory, but manned by two holdout battalions of royal soldiers, most of them untrained Meo tribesmen. The barrage lasted all day and all night, and at dawn the defenders fled, leaving the village to the Communists...
...even bother to deny the shooting. Padong is "the Dienbienphu of 1961 for the U.S.," crowed the New China News Agency, predicting that just as France had been forced to negotiate from defeat in 1954, the U.S. would now have to surrender Laos. The Communists' two favorite Laotian princes, ex-Premier Souvanna Phouma and his half brother, Souphanouvong, arrived in Geneva from Moscow to explain that Padong was only a "cleansing" operation (Western delegates were calling it a disaster, but in some ways, Souvanna's term was more accurate, since in typical Laotian fashion, only ten defenders were...
...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...
...Salon Dore for nearly two hours of further talk. Principal topic: Laos and Southeast Asia. Both men agreed on the need for a certified ceasefire, expressed mutual hopes for a unified, neutralized Laos; but De Gaulle made it clear that no French troops would be committed to preserve Laotian freedom. At this conference, Kennedy shared equally in the conversation time, impressed De Gaulle with his sure knowledge of the subject matter (he used no notes), his occasional sharp turns of phrase. There was no glimmer of possible friction, and Kennedy told an aide later: "You know, we do seem...