The Ugly Record

If Laos is destined for neutrality, who keeps it neutral?

The Communists, with good reason, back the International Control Commission. Created at the 1954 conference that dismembered Indo-China, the I.C.C. is manned by Indians, Canadians and Poles --exactly the kind of neutral-West-Red directorate that Khrushchev now wants to inflict on the United Nations. Last week the I.C.C. was back in Laos 90 men strong to "verify" the ceasefire.

The I.C.C.'s last sojourn in Laos lasted four years. Laotians were appalled at the cost--salaries, plus $7 per diem, plus free housing, for more than 100 men--which the Geneva signatories were supposed to meet but never did. resulting in a still unsettled international tangle. The I.C.C. commandeered the best quarters in Vientiane. Some of the Indian commissioners refused to bathe in anything but soda water, presumably on the ground that Laotian water was full of parasites. Headed from 1955-57, as now, by Samarendranath Sen, an urbane Indian career civil servant, the commission rarely investigated government charges of Pathet Lao raids because of Sen's fear that this would only "antagonize" both sides. When the Laotians, in 1957, briefly got together in a coalition Cabinet, they soon asked the I.C.C. to get out.

In Viet Nam, the I.C.C. has stayed on for seven years, dividing its time between Hanoi in the north and Saigon in the south. According to one Western observer, it has "laid a great big goose egg." In hundreds of votes, the Indians have sided monotonously with the Poles to block investigations of South Viet Nam's charges of terrorist attacks and of arms shipments to North Viet Nam from Russia.

"By I.C.C. records, only 14 foreign military personnel have entered North Viet Nam since 1954," said one Western observer. "One was a Cuban officer who carried a revolver, and that's the only record of entry of arms, although we know that thousands of tons of war material have been shipped in from Russia." The I.C.C. representatives concede that on their visits to Hanoi, they can see Russian munitions planes landing daily. But, explains Chairman Maniketh Gopala Menon, these are "private observations," and only "official observations" can be reported. Otherwise, the I.C.C. might be guilty of "spying."

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