Word: muongs
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Familiar Pattern. U.S. support, however, proved inadequate last week. Fresh from their easy victories on the Plain of Jars, the Communists took Xieng Khouang, then moved south and east toward the government position at Muong Soui. When Communist guns neutralized Muong Soui's airstrip, making reinforcement impossible, the 100-man government garrison pulled out under cover of darkness...
...troublesome. Last year some 3,000 Chinese road builders moved across the border of China's Yunnan province into northern Laos. By the time the monsoon rains began last spring, the Chinese had pushed a gravel-topped all-weather road 55 miles south as far as Muong Sai, a town on an important Mekong River tributary, then northeast toward North Viet Nam. Last September, as the rains ended, the coolies moved on-this time southwestward through the Beng Valley toward the Mekong River and the border of Thailand...
...alarmed Laotian Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma, who has always treated his northern neighbor cautiously. Fearful of a violent reaction from Peking should he protest, the prince at first ignored the road builders, rationalizing that a fuzzy 1962 aid agreement with Peking may have authorized a route as far as Muong Sai after all. But the new spur into the Beng Valley (see map), he told TIME, was "another affair." When the government asked the Chinese to explain, Peking flatly denied that it was involved in Laos at all. Another sort of reply came recently when Souvanna Phouma's commander...
...scenario was rewritten last spring, when the Communists mounted an un precedented monsoon offensive, captured the town of Muong Soui and threatened to drive all the way to the Mekong River. Now the scenario has been modified further. In an operation launched amidst extraordinary secrecy early this month, Royal Laotian troops mounted a two-pronged attack against the Plain of Jars in the northeast, and against Communist units guarding the Ho Chi Minh Trail in central Laos. Last week, for the first time in five years, government forces were in control of part of the broad Plain of Jars...
...Hasty Return. The Muong Soui setback, combined with smaller Communist strikes at other government outposts, caused a crisis in Vientiane, 110 miles to the south. Although neither Vientiane nor Luang Prabang was endangered by the Communist thrust, some right-wing Laotian politicians called for direct U.S. intervention. Souvanna Phouma, vacationing in France, at one point considered flying home but later decided against it-perhaps because a hasty return would have made the situation look even worse. When the U.S. State Department charged that North Viet Nam had "aggressive designs" on Laos, Hanoi immediately countercharged that the U.S. was keeping...