LAOS: Threat from the North

Laotians, who have gone through two coups d’état in a year, last week had a coup de radio. From the southern town of Savannakhet, Prince Boun Oum, 52, tall, silvery-maned royal inspector general and pretender to a long defunct kingdom, took to the radio to declare that the new neutralist government in Vientiane was handing the country over to Communism, and announced “the seizure of power and the abrogation of the constitution in order to bring peace and happiness to the country and the people.” The prince is kingpin of the rich southern Laotian valleys, famed for leading a heroic resistance against the Japanese in 1945 and admired by local tribesmen both for his reputed magic powers (he wears a lukelod, or amulet, that is said to make his chest itch when danger approaches) and his gargantuan drinking and partying.

In Vientiane, Premier Souvanna Phouma, in the fashion of Laotian political figures, sought to shut out the political static from the south by playing soothing mood music. Souvanna, who thinks that the Communist-dominated Pathet Lao will call off their guerrillas if only somebody will talk to them nicely and invite them into the government, called on Prince Boun, “whose patriotism is well known,” to desist from his “initiative.” Then he went off to visit the King Savang Vatthana. But even as he spoke, someone blew up the waterworks in Vientiane. Souvanna sadly ordered all of Prince Boun’s relatives rounded up for questioning—all except the prince’s brother Boun Orm, who is Souvanna’s own Deputy Minister for Security.

But one party in this pageant was dead serious. As Premier Souvanna returned from his royal audience, Pathet Lao rebels crossed the Nam Ma river in force and threatened the northern provincial center of Samneua. The attack was headed by five Communist-led battalions reported to have crossed the northeastern border recently from Communist North Viet Nam. “This is a national crisis,” cried General Ouane Ratthikoun, chief of the royal Laotian armed forces. “It is a time for unity.” The U.S., which had long felt that Vientiane had not been awake to the danger in the north and thinks that Prince Boun has the right idea about the Pathet Lao, moved a task force into nearby waters with 1,100 marines and a squadron of combat helicopters aboard as a warning to Peking to keep hands off Laos’s governments—either one.