The Tortoise & the Hare

A monsoon downpour rained on the Plain of Jars last week--and so did a barrage of Communist Pathet Lao artillery and mortar shells. In an effort to consolidate last month's ground gains on the Plain, the Reds began pinpoint artillery attacks on the last remaining Neutralist toe holds on the plateau, as well as on the headquarters of Neutralist Army Leader General Kong Le at Muong Phan, just west of the Plain. Typically, the Reds blamed the U.S. for the resumption of hostilities, said that "the Americans have given orders to the reactionaries of Kong Le to attack our forces."

Even as the troika-like International Control Commission of India, Poland, and Canada, which was set up to police Laotian neutrality, tried to restore the peace, it lost one of its three heads. Communist Poland recalled its ICC representative to Warsaw in the wake of vigorous U.S. protests that the Pole's "obstructionist tactics" and deliberate boycott of ICC field observation work were sabotaging efforts to maintain a cease-fire between the Neutralists and the Pathet Lao.

As the sporadic artillery duel continued, Neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma desperately tried to get his pro-Communist halfbrother, Pathet Lao Leader Prince Souphanouvong, to agree to a resumption of truce talks. But Souphanouvong vetoed every location for the peace talks suggested by Souvanna Phouma. Sighed a Neutralist colonel: "The discussions move like the tortoise and the war can move like the hare. Maybe before the location for the peace talks is decided, the decision for Laos will have been made in battle."

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