Word: minh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...World War II, he patiently explained: "My people do not know how to fight; they only know how to sing and make love." Later he proved equally uncooperative with the invading Japanese, and French commandos had to parachute in to rescue him. Finally, in 1953, when the Viet Minh threatened to overrun the gold-spired royal capital of Luangprabang, the King flatly refused to flee. "This is my country and my palace," he said, "and I am too old to tremble." Then he went calmly...
Fifty years of uneventful French rule were followed by Japanese occupation during World War II and a brief resistance to the French return. During the seven-year Indo-Chinese War between the French and the Communist Viet Minh, however, most Laotian rebels stayed prudently in exile, returning only to take over the government when Laos was granted autonomy...
...Affairs, Russia's Nikita Khrushchev denned peaceful coexistence as meaning Western abandonment of West Berlin on Russian terms, and acceptance of the Communist conquest of the captive nations of Eastern Europe. Red China stirred up ferment on the borders of India. North Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh upgraded his years-long guerrilla bites at Laos (pop. 2,000,000) into an artillerysupported invasion (see FOREIGN NEWS) so threatening that Laos appealed to the United Nations for help. The U.S., in a stern statement, flatly charged "the Communist bloc" with intent to "foment and direct a rebellion within...
...brother, former Defense Minister Ngon Sananikone, to New York to put Laos' case before U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. Peking promptly huffed that "serious consequences" would follow if the U.N. sent observers to Laos, and held secret conferences in Peking with North Viet Nam Boss Ho Chi Minh. Moscow's Pravda blamed all the trouble on the U.S., and said that the Laotian government is pushing the country to "the abyss of civil war" by a policy of "terror and savage reprisals against the patriotic forces...
...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 in the Laos invasion (after all, Ho Chi Minh had just been in Moscow...