Word: souvanna
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...captured Vientiane in a predawn raid with a battalion of troops who were angry at not getting paid for several months (TIME, Aug. 22). Kong Le's coup toppled a pro-Western Cabinet, and to form a new government the captain turned to neutralist, three-time Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma, 58. Prince Souvanna put together a Cabinet that included the chief of Laos' primitive Meo tribesmen as Minister of Information. But last week he met a cold shoulder from King Savang Vatthana and open defiance from most of the Royal Laotian Army...
Fuzzy on Purpose. The issue was how Laos was to deal with Communists, foreign and domestic. Both Captain Kong Le and Prince Souvanna want to bring into the government the Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas who have waged a flickering jungle rebellion since 1953. Kong Le is just disgusted with fighting fellow Laotians. Prince Souvanna's goal for Laos is "neutrality in neutralism," a doctrine that is necessarily fuzzy, he says, because Laotians are fuzzy thinkers, when thinkers...
Ranged against Kong Le and Prince Souvanna was ex-Defense Minister Gen eral Phoumi Nosavan, 40, whose hastily organized "Committee Against the Coup d'Etat" still holds the royal seat of Luang-prabang and is apparently keeping the King under something close to house arrest. Last week, after a quick trip to Thailand, whose strongly anti-Communist government loudly distrusts Kong Le & Co., General Phoumi turned up in the southern Laotian town of Savannakhet with a brand-new radio transmitter and a vow to chase Kong Le out of the capital...
...Laotian army scattered throughout the country either had not heard of the revolt at all or reacted with Laos' soft, favorite phrase, "be pen nyan [it doesn't matter]." To break this stalemate, Kongle suggested the formation of a new government headed by Prince Souvanna Phouma, half brother of the Communist Pathet Lao commander and onetime neutralist Premier of Laos. This suggestion worried the U.S. State Department, which now concedes that, despite $225 million in U.S. aid since 1955, Laos cannot afford open belligerence toward its Communist neighbors (TIME, Jan. 18) but fears that Souvanna Phouma would lead...