Two to One

In stately procession, the delegates rolled up to the Palais des Nations in Qeneva--the U.S.'s Dean Rusk in a black Homburg, India's smartly tailored V. K. Krishna Menon sweeping an arrogant eye over the press gallery, Russia's grinning Andrei Gromyko, China's dumpy Marshal Chen Yi, hidden first behind the curtains of his huge ZIM limousine and then behind a phalanx of small aides in crumpled clothes. Then came a call from the man who was supposed to convene the conference, Cambodia's unpredictable Prince Norodom Sihanouk. He was enjoying an excellent French lunch en route from the Riviera and would be a little late. Finally, Sihanouk's Lincoln convertible swept up the driveway. The 14-nation conference on Laos got under way just four days and an hour behind schedule.

First Retreat. The principal delay had not been Sihanouk's lunch but a wrangle over who would speak for Laos. In what may have been only the first of successive retreats, the U.S. caved in and agreed to seat not one but two pro-Communist del egations, one from the Pathet Lao guerrillas and the other from ex-Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma (who stayed away, but sent his lissome, sari-clad daughter as a delegate). The pro-Western royal Laotian government, on hearing that it would be outnumbered, boycotted the conference-even though a British diplomat in Laos spent all day on a motor scooter trying to track down the Foreign Affairs Secretary and get him to change his mind.

Thus the conference began with no one speaking for the Laotian government the U.S. had come to defend, while two rebel delegations spoke against it. But the U.S. got little backing from its allies. The French viewed the whole episode through the bifocals of expiring colonialism. They seemed to see the problem of Laos not as any defense of freedom but as a handy lesson to America not to get involved in far-flung parts of the globe. They openly wanted Prince Souvanna back as Premier (as did the British), though he now seems hopelessly committed to the Communists. Souvanna promised to eradicate U.S. influence in Laos, but he quietly hinted to the French that they would be welcome.

The British talked confidently, but without any visible evidence, about Russia's presumed desire to come to terms in order to "keep the Chinese out of Laos." In his eagerness to get the conference going, British Foreign Secretary Lord Home went to unprecedented lengths. On the key question of seating both pro-Communist delegations, Britain and the U.S. agreed to a final position paper that contained a scribbled Rusk provision that the Laotians could sit only "as observers with the right to speak." Home showed the document to Gromyko, and they jointly announced complete agreement--but the scribbled proviso had somehow disappeared. Feeling betrayed and angry, Rusk cabled Kennedy, who reluctantly decided to go ahead with the conference rather than face the neutralist complaints that the U.S. was "obstructionist."

Pious Aims. The opening sessions rang with pious aims. Everybody from Rusk to Gromyko to Home agreed that Laos should be united, unaligned and policed by a neutral commission. The only bit of rancor came, predictably, from Red China's Marshal Chen, who in a long singsong address accused the U.S. of arming a "rebel clique" in Laos and sending Lyndon Johnson to Southeast Asia to "intensify arrangements for aggression and war."

Rusk's reply was measured and almost bland. He said the U.S. had no interest, in bases or alliances in Laos. All he asked was a policed neutrality. The U.S. would even be willing to keep up its aid, funneled through some multilateral agency. "We invite the U.S.S.R. to join with us in underwriting the cost." Rusk promised to withdraw the "limited" U.S. military advisory group from Laos "if the Viet Minh brethren and other elements who have entered from the northeast" return home. "We," he added pointedly, "have no interest in Laos as a staging area or as a thoroughfare for agents of subversion."

Where the conference quickly bogged down was on how to enforce the lofty promises of Laotian neutrality. As the latest example of "the invariable peace-loving policy" of Nikita Khrushchev, a cordial Gromyko laid down a plan designed to prevent any enforcement at all. He proposed that neutrality be policed by the International Control Commission (India, Poland, Canada), which was created at the 1954 Geneva Conference and is already back in Laos to patrol the tentative ceasefire. Gromyko demanded that the Soviet Union, the Laotian government and the commission members (meaning Communist Poland) should have veto power by one means or another over any investigation.

Fateful Question. Gromyko merely made clearer what had long been unstated but obvious Communist plans: the Laotian Communists intend to negotiate their way into a coalition Cabinet and then take over, if necessary after a show of arms that a veto-ridden I.C.C. would not be able to check or condemn. The fateful question, French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville diagnosed accurately, was just who would sit on that first Cabinet. Until this was known, "the French delegation, for its part, would not be prepared to decide the fate of Laos, its international position, and perhaps its very existence."

The Cabinet was being chosen, in tedious negotiations between the warring factions in a bamboo hut on stilts back in Laos. There, too, the pro-Western forces were in retreat. Dropping its demands that political talks be held in no man's land, the demoralized royal government delegation flew hat in hand to Ban Namone, deep in Pathet Lao country. On the first day, the Communists met them with grins and a banquet of Hanoi prawns, beer, ham and boiled fish. Next day they offered no snacks, no smiles, but hardboiled demands: a three-sided conference, two pro-Communist and one pro-Western, to decide on the Cabinet. In Laos as in Geneva, the morning line seemed two to one that freedom was losing.

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