Word: phoumi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...loved peace. To re-establish it after seven years of trouble with the pro-Communist Pathet Lao, Souvanna hopefully sought to end the nagging civil war by forming a government of "national union" that would range from his own neutralists to the pro-U.S. faction of General Phoumi Nosavan at one end and the Communist Pathet Lao at the other...
Laos, where Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma has lately been trying to play the neutralist game, slipped ever closer to the precipice edge. To the south, an anti-Communist army faction led by General Phoumi Nosavan has been in obdurate though mostly nonviolent revolt against Prince Souvanna since last September. On a good will tour a fortnight ago. genial Prince Souvanna awakened one morning in the small northern village of Moung Sai, his head still dizzy from ceremonial quaffing of a strong rice spirit called choum, to learn that the royal capital, Luangprabang. had gone over to General Phoumi. Last week...
...poured $300 million in military and economic aid into primitive, soporific Laos to prop up a succession of anti-Communist governments and to help fend off the skulking guerrillas of the Communist Pathet Lao. About all that remains of that policy and all those millions is anti-Communist General Phoumi Nosavan, who is nursing his pride in southern Laos after taking a shellacking from Kong Le's para troopers...
Drift to the Left. At week's end, Premier Souvanna announced that a garrison of Phoumi's men at Samneua had fallen to the Pathet Lao. Not so, said Captain Kong Le. His own men, aided by Pathet Lao and local villagers, had taken Samneua. "I don't care about the ceasefire," added Kong Le, who apparently commands the only really effective fighting force in all Laos, and likes to see things done his way. "We will keep fighting until all the Phoumi men surrender...
Furthermore, Phoumi's troops had disastrously flunked their first real military test. Some 1,200 strong, they moved through the river town of Paksane toward Vientiane, boasting that they would dine in the capital that evening. But then they encountered about 500 of Captain Kong Le's paratroopers on a muddy road. Phoumi's men fled, leaving weapons, ammunition and trucks. Last week General Phoumi meekly flew to Luangprabang, accepted a ceasefire, and began negotiations to get some of his own men into the Cabinet...