Word: phnom-penh
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...time of the allied assault, the Communists were involved in a conflict with the six-week-old Phnom-Penh government of Premier Lon Nol, which had overthrown Prince Norodom Sihanouk on March 18 and had ordered all North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops to give up their Cambodian sanctuaries and leave the country. Moving westward so as to put pressure on Lon Nol not to interfere with their refuges and their supply lines, the Communists started seizing territory on the way to the Mekong River. In effect, they turned their backs on South Viet Nam; as Secretary of Defense Melvin...
...charged with guarding Route 1, together with Cambodian troops, managed periodically to pry open enemy roadblocks on some of the routes. But the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops, using their familiar hit-and-run tactics, often closed them down again a few miles away. Most residents of Phnom-Penh unconcernedly continue their daily lives at the normal slow and smiling pace. They are intrigued by all the newly visible artifacts of war, and many have taken to wearing pieces of military gear-anything from Red Chinese garrison caps to American cartridge belts -but are almost wholly unprepared for real...
...Communists' threat to Cambodia's present government presents a dilemma for almost everyone involved in the Indochinese war. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has said that a Communist regime in neighboring Phnom-Penh would be "intolerable." The anti-Communist government of Thailand would be scarcely less horrified by such a prospect. When Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops into the border sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia on April 30, he warned that the Communist occupation of all Cambodia "would mean that South Viet Nam was completely outflanked and the forces of Americans in this area as well...
Reign of Chaos. The Communists can choose between two basic methods to carry out their strategy. One is to continue their stranglehold on the capital's sources of food and outside supplies, hoping that the regime will cave in from chaos and panic. The other is to attack Phnom-Penh directly, either to occupy it permanently or to force its destruction by provoking South Vietnamese bombing raids or other counterattacks. Either result, says a Western diplomat in Phnom-Penh, would be a double victory for the Communists. His reasoning: "The Communists think they will prove that the sanctuary operations...
...North Vietnamese weapons and other supplies that allied troops have uncovered in the sanctuary areas. Moreover, while U.S. troops will be coming out of Cambodia, the South Vietnamese are firmly determined to keep the sanctuaries free of Communist troops and supplies no matter who is in power in Phnom-Penh. As long as they succeed, U.S. military advisers seem unworried over Cambodia's eventual fate...