Word: souvanna
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Just a year after the Geneva agreement consolidated Laos' three warring factions into a single government, the precarious arrangement is falling apart. Reason: the Communists are simply ignoring the truce, as well as their longtime alliance with Neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma, and are seeking to wrest control of the vital Plain of Jars in central Laos from neutralist troops. Though at first suspicious of the neutralist regime, Rightist General Phoumi Nosavan sent four battalions to help it. Despite such assistance, the neutralist forces under General Kong Le have only one strategic position left on the plain - Phou Theneng mountain...
While the neutralists are increasingly "neutral" against the Reds, Premier Souvanna Phouma continues to insist on a defensive war, is reluctant to take the initiative. "What can I do?" muses Kong Le despondently. "The Premier is always telling me I must not attack. It is very difficult...
...sporadic artillery duel continued, Neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma desperately tried to get his pro-Communist halfbrother, Pathet Lao Leader Prince Souphanouvong, to agree to a resumption of truce talks. But Souphanouvong vetoed every location for the peace talks suggested by Souvanna Phouma. Sighed a Neutralist colonel: "The discussions move like the tortoise and the war can move like the hare. Maybe before the location for the peace talks is decided, the decision for Laos will have been made in battle...
...positive that Metropolitan Broadcasting's President Bennet Korn intends to keep it on the air. A danger is that viewers, accustomed to soaking up all the bottled pap that TV offers without thinking, may soon be taking for gospel such flawless modern history as this: "Premier Souvanna Diem came to power in 1958 when his halfbrother, Prince Song Phoami, was assassinated by his uncle, Prince Phim Dim, who mistook him for his son, Prince Stant Phoami...
...Jars and to let the crisis cool of its own accord. If they moved off the plain, they would surely march right into a civil war with Phoumi's rightist forces, thus inviting U.S. intervention, which they wished to avoid at all costs. Despite protests by both Souvanna and the U.S., the Pathet Lao's territorial grab was a fait accompli. There were those in the U.S. who thought the only long-range answer to the Laos problem was outright partition. Already a de facto partition of Laos existed: the northern part of the country was firmly controlled...