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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
The Anousavari, in Vientiane, is built of cement and has bas-relief
on the sides and temple-like ornamentation along the top and
cornices; a stairway leads to the top of the monument, which
provides panoramic views of the city.
Courtesy Gina Merris
On August 9, Captain Kong Le led the Second Paratroop
Battalion
in a virtually bloodless coup d'état that changed the
history of
modern Laos. In taking over Vientiane, the paratroopers
had
unwittingly chosen a moment when the entire cabinet was in
Louangphrabang conferring with the king. They informed
their
compatriots and the outside world by broadcasting their
communiqués
on the radio. In a rally at the city football stadium on
August 11,
Kong Le expanded on his goals: end the fighting in Laos,
stem
corruption, and establish a policy of peace and
neutrality.
Recalling the experience of the first coalition when the
country
was temporarily at peace, Kong Le asked for the nomination
of
Souvanna Phouma as prime minister.
On August 11, General Ouan Ratikoun, as the cabinet's
envoy,
arrived in Vientiane from Louangphrabang. After
negotiations with
Kong Le and Souvanna Phouma as president of the National
Assembly,
Ouan returned to Louangphrabang with a document in which
the coup
leaders requested the cabinet to return. They agreed to
withdraw
their forces to specified points in the city and
stipulated that
these steps would lead to negotiations on the government's
future.
Two days later, however, when Ouan returned alone, it
became
evident that the cabinet was reluctant to return to
Vientiane. Once
this news spread, demonstrators gathered outside the
Presidency of
the Council of Ministers demanding Somsanith's immediate
resignation; they next marched on the National Assembly,
where
Souvanna Phouma met them and, startled by their vehemence,
attempted to moderate their demands. Inside, the forty-one
deputies
present voted unanimously to censure the Somsanith
government. On
August 14, a delegation of the assembly carried the news
of this
vote to Louangphrabang and asked the king to name Souvanna
Phouma
to form a new government. Fearing violence in Vientiane,
Somsanith
resigned, and the king named Souvanna Phouma prime
minister. The
new government was invested by thirty-four deputies on
August 16.
The next day, Kong Le declared his coup d'état over and
vacated the
Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
On receiving word of the coup, Phoumi flew from
Louangphrabang
to Ubol, where he informed Thai and United States
officials of his
intention to "straighten things out" in Laos and from
where he sent
emissaries to Savannakhét and Pakxé. In Bangkok the
following day,
Phoumi met with Sarit, United States embassy counselor
Leonard
Unger, and the chief of the United States military mission
in
Thailand. He outlined plans for a parachute drop to
recapture the
Vientiane airport and ferry in additional forces by air to
oust the
rebels. He requested that Thailand and the United States
provide
air transport, fuel, salaries for his troops, and two
radiobroadcasting units. He also asked for a secure
channel of
communication between his new headquarters at Savannakhét
and
Bangkok.
These steps, taken in secrecy, received immediate
approval in
Washington. Orders went out to designate a senior PEO
officer as
liaison to Phoumi, and a PEO channel was established
between
Savannakhét and the United States military mission in
Bangkok,
bypassing the embassy in Vientiane. Aircraft of Civil Air
Transport, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) front, were
made
available to Phoumi, and Laotian troops training at bases
in
Thailand were to be returned as soon as possible to
Savannakhét.
Sarit, Pibul's minister of defense who had come to
power in a
coup in October 1958, had invested heavily in Phoumi and
was not
about to let him go. The United States Joint Chiefs of
Staff, for
their part, saw aid to Phoumi as preserving at least part
of the
anticommunist forces in Laos from the effects of the split
in the
royal army. But from this point on, much as United States
officials
tried to separate the two issues, aid to the
anticommunists in Laos
was inseparable from Sarit's personal commitment to
Phoumi. The
United States embassy in Bangkok was also alarmed by the
possibility that inadequate support for Phoumi might lead
Sarit to
intervene unilaterally in Laos because he had already
imposed a
blockade on Vientiane.
Data as of July 1994
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