LAOS: Welcome in Beauty

In their own fashion, Laotians last week gave a red-carpet welcome to the fact-finding subcommittee sent by the U.N. Security Council to determine formally whether Laos is a victim of foreign Communist aggression. There were no military bands, no spotless guard of honor, no protocol-wise assemblage of local diplomats. Instead, hundreds of lissome girls wearing flowing silk scarves and brilliant sarongs trimmed with gold appeared at the airport bearing silver bowls of flowers. It was the traditional Laotian “welcome in beauty,” which requires that the wisest and most beautiful girls of a village greet an important stranger by kneeling along the path and offering him flowers.

Somewhat bemused by all this, the 17 U.N. representatives accepted their flowers and settled down in Vientiane’s decrepit Settha Palace Hotel and the firetrap Somboun Hotel, emptied for the occasion of its usual tenants—dancing girls and prostitutes. By general admission, the task before the fact-finders was roughly like trying to plow the sea.

Words & Deeds. Early in the week Moscow had made a plain bid to undercut the U.N. subcommittee by proposing that the nine nations that attended the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indo-China should meet again and revive the three-power (India, Poland, Canada) International Control Commission for Laos. The U.S., recalling that the Laos government itself 16 months ago refused to tolerate the Control Commission’s interference any longer, rejected the Soviet proposal, recommended instead “the cessation of Communist intervention and subversion” in Laos. Backing up its words with deeds, the U.S. continued to pour into Vientiane light military equipment and civilian instructors, including hastily demobilized Army Signal Corps men; by week’s end the U.S. population of Laos (about 600) was double what it had been two months ago.

But convinced as the U.S. might be, there remained great doubt that the U.N. fact-finders would be able to document the charge of intervention in Laos to the satisfaction of the world’s Foreign Offices, not a few of which would much prefer not to know what Peking and Communist North Viet Nam are up to in Laos. The chairman of the U.N. party, Japan’s Shinichi Shibusawa, promised that the subcommittee would “go wherever it had to”—thus quashing earlier reports that the investigators would not stir out of Vientiane into the mysterious northern jungles where the Communist attacks are concentrated. And a Laotian government spokesman proudly announced the capture of six or seven enemy soldiers alleged to be North Vietnamese regulars. But, under questioning, Laotian officials conceded that at least some of the prisoners were Vietnamese deserters who may never have been involved in the Laotian fighting.

Advance & Withdrawal. In Vientiane late in the week Laos’ harried Premier Phoui Sananikone told TIME Correspondent Paul Hurmuses: “It has been a week since our army has made contact with the Viet Minh, and our commander in the north now says that they have withdrawn to North Viet Nam . . . It’s obvious that the Viet Minh will not jeopardize their position while the subcommittee is in Laos.” But Phoui insisted that “if the subcommittee travels to the villages of Muong Son and Muong Het, they will find ample evidence of Viet Minh presence. These two villages were under the control of Viet Minh in uniform, and the villagers were massed daily for propaganda lectures.”

What if the U.N. Security Council was not persuaded by such evidence? Said Phoui: “That is an eventuality I don’t like to think about. If it occurred, we would ask the General Assembly to send permanent observers to Laos. And if this appeal failed, well, we would be obliged to call upon SEATO.”