Word: laotians
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...Laos has a government radio station, which news services monitor, and on the basis of its staticky, chattering and roaring report the United Press fortnight ago announced the name of the new president of the Laotian National Assembly. Bangkok and Hong Kong newspapers printed the story on their front pages, and a TIME correspondent picked it up (TIME, June 2). But the story was wrong. The president was not Prince Souphanouvong, leader of the Red-lining Patriotic Front, which last month gained control of 21 of the Assembly's 59 seats. It was instead 47-year-old Pheng Phongsavan...
Fluttering Flags. In Cambodia Kishi was welcomed with fluttering flags and welcome arches, agreed to extend $4,000,000 (in yen) in economic aid over a three-year period. In the crumbling Laotian capital of Vientiane, sarong-clad beauties pressed bouquets on Kishi, and Laotian government officials welcomed his offer of $4,000,000 in aid and technical assistance. In South Viet Nam's capital of Saigon, Kishi's reception was formal and cool. Saigon's politicians were miffed because 1) they hoped that Kishi would offer $150 million in reparations and help build a major...
...steadily broadened its aid program, the free rate has soared as high as 120 kip for $1 in the markets of Vientiane, Bangkok and Hong Kong. The disparity between official and free-exchange rates has become an open invitation to speculators. The system works this way: a Laotian importer wants to bring in 20 radios at a unit cost of $50 each. He gets an import license for $1,000 worth of radios from the Laotian government. He pays for it with $1,000 in Laotian kip, which he has already bought on the free market in Bangkok or Hong...
...Laos (marked with the universally recognized symbol of clasped hands in front of a U.S. flag). But before Laos' primitive customs guards can catch up and impose an import tax, the radios are smuggled back across the Mekong River and shipped into Bangkok for sale at handsome profits. Laotian officials, either out of confusion or collusion, have granted orders for some items that seem of questionable utility in a country that is still largely jungle. Recently, licenses were granted for 25 television receivers, though Laos has no TV station. The receivers were smuggled back into Thailand and resold...
...Phouma has shown itself increasingly aware of the extent to which both corruption and the artificial exchange rate are damaging both Laos and the U.S. attempts to aid it. Last week U.S. Ambassador J. Graham Parsons flew back from Washington to his post in Vientiane to sit down with Laotian officials and work out plans for 1) establishing a realistic rate of exchange, and 2) helping Laos get a larger real share of the benefits it is entitled...