Word: southeasterly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...particularly bitter battle in the war of words between Moscow and Washington centers on American charges that Soviet-backed forces in Southeast Asia have been using highly toxic biochemical weapons. Speaking in Berlin last week, Secretary Haig charged that "potent mycotoxins," superpoisons derived from grain molds and known to be produced by the Soviets, were found in the region. Experts at the State Department said that the toxins were isolated on a leaf from Cambodia, where the Soviet-backed government is fighting Khmer insurgents...
...Soviet news agency TASS called the allegations a "big lie." American officials answered that the evidence would be submitted to a United Nations panel investigating chemical weapons. Five additional samples from Southeast Asia are currently being analyzed, and officials think they will show that the toxins were also used in Laos. Intelligence specialists are seeking evidence to confirm widespread reports that Soviet forces have used the poisons, known as T2 toxins, in Afghanistan...
...connection was first made by Writer Sterling Seagrave, who presents a persuasive circumstantial case for the Soviet violations in his forthcoming book Yellow Rain. Seagrave interviewed victims of chemical attacks in Southeast Asia, Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as the doctors who treated them. In Afghanistan soldiers fighting the Soviet invaders told him about being attacked by rockets fired from helicopters. The rockets released a "yellowish-brown" cloud that caused victims to "die quickly, vomiting blood and fouling their clothes...
...State Department is still reluctant to level public accusations at the Soviet Union. Some officials would like to do so on the humane grounds that public disclosure might prevent further use of the poison and avoid more such deaths in both Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. More cautious U.S. officials prefer to await similar verification that the chemical has been used in both Laos and Afghanistan...
...Maoist Thai Communist Party. Hanoi expelled Thai guerrillas from their sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos and confiscated their weapons and ammunition. The Thai Communists lost a second ally soon after when China sought support for Cambodia's Pol Pot regime from the five members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which Thailand belongs. ASEAN in turn demanded that Peking minimize its relations with Southeast Asian Communist parties. As a result, it has sharply reduced its support of Thai insurgents...