Word: phoumi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Split Portfolios. What was finally achieved at the house on stilts in the Plaine des Jarres last week was the most shaky of coalition governments. At the last moment, accord nearly broke down when Red Prince Souphanouvong began wrangling with his old enemy, General Phoumi Nosavan, about the division of Cabinet posts. In a rare outburst of anger at his halfbrother, Souvanna shouted at Souphanouvong: "You go sort it out with Phoumi and come back when you agree...
...agree, don't come back." In taking office as Premier. Souvanna will name Red Prince Souphanouvong and General Phoumi as Vice Premiers, and all three have agreed that major issues must be decided by a unanimous vote-a kind of Laotian troika. Four Cabinet posts (including Economics and Information) go to the Communists, and four others (including Finance and Education) to Phoumi's antiCommunists. Phoumi's longtime ally. Prince Boun Oum. will resign as Premier and retire from active politics to his meaningless lifetime post as Inspector General of the realm. The remaining eleven Cabinet posts...
...week he was acting his affable best, assuring newsmen that the new Laos was happy to accept aid "without conditions" from East and West. Washington was swift to make its contribution: the payment of $3,000,000 a month to the Laos government-suspended last February to help force Phoumi into the coalition-was resumed...
Minded Store. The other neutralist ministers range politically from liberal to far right, including some who are as determinedly anti-Communist as General Phoumi himself. Biggest problem ahead is how to integrate the three rival armies: 1 ) Phoumi's 60,000 Royal Laotian troops, 2) Souphanouvong's 15,000 Communist Pathet Lao and 3) Captain Kong Le's 5,000 "neutralist" paratroops. Souvanna hopes to reduce the swollen army to the size of a national police force and to use the discharged troops in such public works as building roads, schools and dispensaries...
...General Phoumi had agreed to be Finance Minister and Red Prince Souphanouvong to take the Economy and Planning port folio, but Phoumi flatly vetoed Souvan-na's candidate for Foreign Minister, a talkative, leftist bookseller named Quinini Pholsena. At week's end, as the three princes and the general separated, the only solid-seeming agreement was to resume meetings this week...