Word: phouma
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Home & Abroad. After a chummy meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Russia, "Neutralist" Prince Souvanna Phouma seemed to become more Communist-minded with every new Communist bigwig he met, every big reception they organized for him. In Peking, he was met at the airport by Premier Chou En-lai and, together with his half brother and traveling companion, Red Prince Souphanouvong, was flown to the lakeside resort of Hangchow for a personal chat with Mao Tse-tung. Souvanna emerged warmly telling his Red Chinese hosts: "When we again have peace, it is to you we shall turn for aid in building...
After weeks of deliberate Russian stalling, word came last week that Nikita Khrushchev had finally agreed to a ceasefire. Laos' peripatetic Prince Souvanna Phouma, after a daylong talk with Khrushchev himself, happily flew back toward Laos, proclaiming that the cease-fire would become effective as soon as he arrived...
...Souvanna Phouma, still recognized by the Communists as Premier and now tolerated by the U.S., is clearly returning to take over power. All factions, including the Pathet Lao's Red Prince Souphanouvong, will peacefully assemble in Luangprabang, this week for the long delayed cremation of King Savang Vatthana's father, who has been encased for 18 months in a sandalwood coffin. As the government-controlled Lao Presse hopefully put it: the cremated King, in his "final departure toward nirvana, might bring about the miracle for which the whole world waits...
Precisely why Khrushchev is so willing to wait in Laos is not difficult to see. In part, of course, it is because he is still engaged in talks with Souvanna Phouma. But, as his letter to President Kennedy on Cuba indicates, the spectre of Cuba is now hovering over all Cold War diplomatic exchanges, and everyone realizes that the United States cannot reserve the right to intervene in Cuba and at the same time take any strong exception to Soviet aid to the Pathet Lao. It is hardly possible, as Khruschev's Cuban note said, to handle matters in such...
When the shooting has stopped, the conference will begin. Souvanna Phouma will have returned by then and can attempt to bring the Laotian factions together into his government. Whatever comes of it, both Russia and the West realize that this conference is probably the last chance for a settlement in Laos...