Word: vatthana
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...wellarmed, pro-Western troops of the Royal Laotian Army has simply been to clear a 50-mile stretch of road. It runs from the administrative capital of Vientiane, where sits the U.S.-backed government of Premier Prince Boun Oum, to the royal capital of Luangprabang, where King Savang Vatthana lounges under a white parasol taking little interest...
...comfortable exile in Cambodia. To end this charade, the U.S. flew National Assembly members to Vientiane from all over Laos last week to vote the Boun Oum government into office. All 41 legislators voted approval (the rest of the 59-man Assembly could not be found). King Savang Vatthana gathered the Cabinet in the National Assembly and gave his official blessings before a gilt statue of Buddha. Approached by a reporter in Cambodia at this point, Souvanna, a peaceable man, hinted he would now resign, thus leaving the Russians without a "government" to support...
After taking the capital city of Vientiane by storm, Laos' General Phoumi Nosavan moved to town with his new Premier, easygoing Prince Boun Oum, and a clutch of U.S. "advisers." A majority of the National Assembly had already voted Boun Oum into power, and King Savang Vatthana even bestirred himself to leave the pagodas of his home town, Luangprabang, and visit the capital to give the new government his blessing. But the civil war in Laos was in fact no nearer to an end than ever-and at week's end the Communists were moving ominously to intensify...
...Kong Le retreated through the jungle, Russian Ilyushin planes flying from North Viet Nam dropped supplies to his troops; his route of march would take him straight to the royal capital of Luang-prabang, where torpid King Savang Vatthana has sat for five months treating the whole civil war with lofty disdain. But General Phoumi made no attempt to pursue, airily declared that his jungle garrisons would take care of Kong Le along the way. General Phoumi's only announced policy is to "transform all Laotians into Laotians" (i.e., non-Communists). To which Prince Boun Oum added this sage...
Only a week after he arrived amid elaborate ceremonies as the first Russian en voy to Laos, Ambassador Aleksandr Abramov sat in shirtsleeves in a seedy hotel room in Vientiane and fumed. King Savang Vatthana had pointedly declined to invite him to present his credentials. Neutralist Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma canceled the important bad ceremony, in which Buddhist priests were to tie a lucky string around Abramov's wrist. And Souvanna announced the "technical arrest" of Paratroop Captain Kong Le, Vientiane's military boss, on the ground that the expansive reception he staged for Abramov had been unauthorized...