Stalemate

"Laos is finished." declared Cambodia's neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk--though he himself had called the 14-nation conference in Geneva to try to save it. "It will be completely lost in a few weeks." Rating the chances of saving Laos from Communism at "one in a thousand," the moody prince then departed for a rest on the Riviera. Most of the other big names, including Dean Rusk and Andrei Gromyko, had got away even earlier, leaving the podium to Red China's Foreign Minister, Marshal Chen Yi. He warned that the agreed goal of Laotian neutrality applied only to "international" matters--Laos could not join military alliances, but within the country, Communist forces should be perfectly free to harass any government or take it over.

The conference ground to a recess amid vague hopes that Kennedy and Khrushchev might have some new ideas at Vienna. The peace talks at Ban Namone, deep in the jungle, had dwindled to thrice-a-week meetings between second-stringers. Pro-Western Premier Prince Boun Oum flew off to one of his favorite places, the Riviera, ostensibly to talk to Sihanouk.

Fighting sputtered on despite the ceasefire. American pilots stood their planes on their wingtips to swoop down and drop supplies to a garrison of Meo tribesmen under daily attack in the mountain village of Padong, only 20 miles from the Communist "capital" of Xiengkhouang. In one five-day period, 40 Russian planes delivered 80 tons of supplies to the Pathet Lao.

In a long report to Geneva, the International Control Commission, which is supposed to be policing the truce, simply threw up its hands. Wrote Chairman Samar Sen, an Indian civil servant: "In the jungle, it is nearly impossible to say who shot first or who gave the first provocation." Obviously, unsympathetic to what he called "the Boun Oum group," Sen said he had no "detailed evidence" to back up repeated government charges of Pathet Lao raids--and he showed no desire to go into the jungle to get it.

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