Word: phnom-penh
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...regime sought to consolidate its hold on Cambodia last week, portraits of Prince Norodom Sihanouk were hurriedly removed in government offices and shops throughout the capital of Phnom-Penh. While the deposed chief of state was gone, however, it was clear that he was not forgotten. In a Phnom-Penh hotel, a visitor asked for one of the Sihanouk portraits as a souvenir. "Oh no," replied a clerk. "We are saving it. Nothing is sure. We may have to put it back...
...mood of uneasiness and uncertainty prevailed in Cambodia and in neighboring Laos as well. In Peking, Sihanouk called for a war of liberation against the "traitors and renegades" who had seized power in Phnom-Penh. From Hanoi came pledges of "total support" for Sihanouk, and North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong hurried to Peking to confer with the deposed prince. In Phnom-Penh, both the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong closed their embassies, a move short of outright diplomatic rupture but suggestive of trouble to come...
...first sign that Sihanouk might have lost control came when air controllers at Phnom-Penh's Pochentong Airport began to turn away incoming airliners. A Burma Airways plane, whose passengers included a U.S. Coast Guard officer en route to Cambodia to negotiate the return of the hijacked Columbia Eagle (see THE NATION), was in its approach pattern when it was waved off. A few hours later, a government communiqué announced: "In view of the political crisis created in recent days by the chief of state, Prince Sihanouk, and in conformity with the constitution, the National Assembly...
...Back in Phnom-Penh, Lon Nol and Sirik Matak had been doing their best to make Kosygin's allies uncomfortable. They sent pro forma notes of apology to the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong for the damage to their embassies but at the same time handed the Communists an ultimatum: all of their troops must be out within three days...
...Administrators often knew next to nothing about the land and people in their charge, and few were in office long enough to learn; between 1892 and 1930, Paris dispatched 23 governors-general to Hanoi. Outside the major cities of Viet Nam, French secondary schools were almost nonexistent; by 1939, Phnom-Penh's only school beyond the primary level had graduated a grand total of four students...