Word: phnom-penh
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With those words, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger acknowledged last week that the final Indochina crisis was at hand-both in Indochina and in Washington. The Khmer Rouge were masters of Phnom-Penh; the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were tightening their noose around Saigon. Meanwhile most Congressmen remained adamantly opposed to voting any more military aid for South Viet Nam. U.S. involvement in the wars of Indochina was coming to a last and dangerous conclusion; now the most important question to the U.S. was how to evacuate several thousand Americans from South Viet Nam and what to do about...
...unity." Despite that description the new Cabinet included no members of the broadening opposition; the Premier, Nguyen Ba Can, is a bland labor unionist who can be counted on to do the President's bidding. General Duong Van ("Big") Minh demanded that Thieu resign before Saigon "becomes another Phnom-Penh," but the call was not likely to be heeded...
...Ministry of Information, meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge commander in Phnom-Penh broadcast an appeal to all "ministers and generals who have not run away" to meet with him to "help formulate measures to restore order." At week's end, although almost all communication with Phnom-Penh was closed, there were unconfirmed reports that the Khmer Rouge had beheaded some members of the former government. There was no word as to the fate of Premier Long Boret, who was said to have been arrested while attempting to escape by helicopter...
...conscripted peasants swelled their ranks, the rebels fought alone. By the time the U.S. bombing ceased, the Communists claimed 90% of Cambodia's territory and were on the outskirts of the capital. Only the stubborn and unexpected resistance of the government's poorly paid troops kept Phnom-Penh from falling in 1973 or 1974. This year, when the insurgents blockaded the Mekong River and cut off all land access to the capital, the government had to rely on a U.S. airlift for food, fuel and ammunition...
...night before the evacuation it was pretty clear that the next day would be it. The American embassy spread word to newsmen who would go to gather at the Phnom Hotel, Phnom-Penh's journalistic watering hole, at 7 a.m. The night was relatively calm. No Cambodians could have guessed that the U.S. was about to abandon them...