An Offer & a Warning

Among the many issues that divide East and West. Laos is one of the most combustible. With this in mind. President John F. Kennedy sent Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson back to Moscow last month with a cold-eyed bargain to offer Nikita Khrushchev.

Thompson had to chase Khrushchev halfway across Russia to deliver his message, finally caught up with him at Novosibirsk. 1.750 miles east of Moscow, and settled down for a four-hour discussion. With direct implication that his words were those chosen by President Kennedy himself. Thompson made the blunt declaration that the U.S. is dead serious in its desire to make Laos neutral. When the U.S. said neutrality, added Thompson, it meant (as it has not always in the past) complete neutrality. Thompson offered specifics of what the U.S. was prepared to do. provided the Russians were prepared to reciprocate: P: To withdraw completely the U.S.'s quasi-military mission, which for five years has been training the Royal Laotian Army.

P: To channel all U.S. aid to Laos through an international body acceptable to both sides. This would include a willingness to provide a proportionate share of aid to Communist-dominated Pathet Lao areas, provided that they had accepted peaceable reintegration with a nationally elected government.

P: To declare publicly, and in writing, the U.S. Government's acceptance of a truly neutral Laos.

Thompson asked whether, in return, the Russians were willing to abandon their military backing of the Pathet Lao rebels and concur in Laotian neutrality. Furthermore, Thompson wanted to find out whether Khrushchev was prepared to underwrite Red Chinese concurrence in such a decision.

Or Else. This was the U.S.'s offer. But Thompson also had a warning. President Kennedy wanted to make it perfectly clear that the future of Southeast Asia was absolutely vital to the U.S. The U.S. was prepared to tolerate true neutralism, but it would not, under any circumstances, tolerate Communist attempts to subvert, colonize or take over nations such as Laos and other countries in the area. To combat it, the U.S. would take any measures necessary. If Khrushchev, instead of damping down the dangerous fire in Laos, chose to fan the flames, the U.S. reaction would be immediate. For every two guns the Communists sent to the Pathet Lao. the U.S. was prepared by way of "escalation"' to ship three to the pro-Western army of Premier Boun Oum and his strongman, General Phoumi Nosavan.

While the big powers were talking over the heads of the Laotians, General Phoumi. most anti-Communist of Laotian leaders, journeyed to Cambodia last week to see self-exiled Neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma, who was just back from a visit to northern Laos, where he hailed the pro-Communist rebels as "liberators." Surprisingly, the two old enemies agreed to a three-nation commission of neutrals (Malaya, Burma and Cambodia) to supervise a cease-fire in Laos. In return for Souvanna's assent. General Phoumi. with U.S. encouragement, promised to support Souvanna's policy of "strict neutrality."

Such neutrality might be hard to maintain. And a neutral Laos serving as a buffer state between Communism and the free world is not the tidiest of solutions. But then, few things in Laos are (see following story).

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