some NLHS success in splitting off a small number of them. Second, he was able to count on staunch US backing for his consistent central demand for the removal from Laos of all North Vietnamese troops, which had been continuously present in significant numbers in the eastern border areas since January 1961. The withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops, of course, might well have undermined the security of some of the Communists' base areas, and when Souvanna Phouma failed to budge from his position, the NLHS felt compelled to withdraw its ministers from Vientiane. This signaled an abandonment of the coalition strategy that was to last nearly a decade. The NLHS removed to the town of Sam Neua in its base area, near the North Vietnamese border, whence it issued condemnatory statements against the "illegal" Vientiane government. (The latter, for its part, continued to hold open the Cabinet posts that had been allotted to the NLHS in the June 1962 settlement.)

In the period of renewed warfare after 1963, both sides had to operate under severe limitations on the means at their disposal. This was because each needed to camouflage its own violations of the 1962 Geneva Agreement on Laos in order to keep the conflict localized and avoid provoking a major confrontation between the big outside powers aligned on either side-i.e., the United States and the USSR. However, given the diametrically opposed and seemingly irreconcilable views of the two sides as to the nature and origins of the Indochina conflict, such violations were conceded by most informed observers to be inevitable. Each side tended to view the very viability or marginal successes of the other to be a function of the support extended to its adversary by aggressive outsiders, and it therefore felt justified in calling on its own backers for assistance.

The outside supporters of each side tended to share the view of that side--i.e., they saw themselves as engaged in Laos in thwarting the aggression of the allies of the other side. Consequently, both the US and the USSR continued arming their respective clients as they had done before the 1962 ceasefire. On the US side, arms and ammunition were furnished to the Vientiane government through the Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Laos and the Central Intelligence Agency, and unofficial bombing was carried out in Laos by the US Air Force. On the other side, Soviet arms and ammunition were furnished to the Pathet Lao, and North Vietnamese Army units operated in Laos

Two Pathet Lao officers scan the countryside for movements of rightist troops in a mountain region controlled by the Communists.

-A. Vasilev for TASS via Sovfoto.

without any official acknowledgment by Hanoi. In proffering their aid, however, the US and USSR seemed to be operating under a tacit agreement to keep it within limits in order to avoid destabilizing the situation to a degree that might ignite a direct confrontation between them.

Given the disinclination of their patrons to escalate the conflict in Laos beyond manageable limits, both sides were forced to operate within a rather narrow range of options, making the best use they could of the means at their disposal. The result was more or less of a stalemate which left the country partitioned into two zones of control divided by an irregular line running roughly from the northwest to the southeast. This line was not fixed, but shifted back and forth according to the seasonal advances made by each side, and pockets of resistance loyal to each side continued to exist deep within the territory of the other. Generally speaking, however, the partition left most of the mountain country with its diverse tribal groups in the hands of the NLHS, while the Mekong Valley with its towns stayed continuously under the control of the Vientiane government. Over the decade, the population map of Laos underwent considerable alteration as hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of them

tribesmen, abandoned their villages (where they were subject to both NLHS conscription and American bombing) and sought refuge in or near the Mekong Valley.

The 1973 Accords

It was the gradual disintegration of the mantle of secrecy surrounding the tacit American-Soviet understanding concerning Laos that brought about a shift in the relative equilibrium in that country. Growing publicity led to increased domestic and international constraints on American actions in Laos, reducing the ability of the US to provide the assistance which theretofore had enabled the Vientiane government to hold its own in the struggle against the NLHS and the latter's Soviet-backed North Vietnamese allies. In these vastly changed circumstances, the NLHS apparently decided that the situation had become favorable for a renewed coalition strategy whereby it could pursue the twin political objectives of eliminating the power base of the rightist elements in the Vientiane government and bending Souvanna Phouma toward the left. The NLHS leaders consequently made a major concession in agreeing to enter negotiations with Souvanna Phouma in Vientiane with a view to concluding a cease-fire and establishing a new coalition government.

The talks, which began in late 1972, were protracted, but they finally resulted in the Vientiane Agreement on Restoring Peace and Achieving National Concord in Laos (signed on February 21, 1973) and an implementing Protocol (signed on September 14, 1973). These two documents paved the way for the formation of the PGNU, which included equal numbers of rightist and NLHS ministers and was headed by Souvanna Phouma in a nonparty capacity. The accords left no authority to the existing National Assembly, whose mandate was weakened by the fact that it had been elected by voting held only in the rightist-held areas of Laos. With the Assembly in limbo, the two parties to the coalition were on an equal footing politically, and both looked to fresh Assembly elections to renew their respective claims to legitimacy. From the point of view of the NLHS, however, such elections would involve unacceptable risks until it was assured of political control of the central government and therefore of the election machinery.

The remainder of this article will be devoted to

Prince Souvanna Phouma, center, at a press conference after the signing of the Protocol to the Vientiane Agreement on September 14, 1973. To his right, Peng Phongsavan, Minister of the Interior of the Royal Laotian Government and its negotiator in talks with the Communists, and to his left, Phoumi Vongvichit, negotiator for the NLHS and its Deputy Premier in the coalition Cabinet formed in April 1974.

-Yves Billy/Sygma.

an examination of the manner in which the NLHS achieved a seemingly decisive political victory in Laos by exploiting and contravening the two 1973 agreements. For the sake of simplicity, the two documents will be referred to in the following discussion as (for the Vientiane Agreement) and II (for the Protocol), with specific articles and paragraphs indicated by Arabic numerals and capital letters, respectively.'

Cease-Fire and Intervention

The first issue to be considered is the question of the nature of foreign military intervention in Laos after the signing of the Vientiane Agreement. This is dealt with here both because it is a relatively

1 The text of I was broadcast by the Pathet Lao News Agency (based in Sam Neua) on February 22, 1973. See Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Asia and Pacific (Washington, DC), Feb. 23, 1973. The text of II was broadcast by the same agency on September 14, 1973. See ibid., Sept. 19, 1973. Both texts were broadcast in English.

tory issues, such as the question of recognizing the Communist insurgent governments in South Vietnam and Cambodia or the question of the status of the National Assembly, were repeatedly put on ice. Phoumi Vongvichit, the Deputy Prime Minister representing the NLHS, demonstrated moderation during a tenure of several months as Acting Prime Minister after Souvanna Phouma had suffered a heart attack and gone to France for care and convalescence. As a consequence, the PGNU seemed able to function smoothly despite the requirement of unanimity in government decisions (II, 4).

From the early days of the coalition, however, NLHS representatives in Vientiane and Luang

A 1962 photo of Nouhak Phoumsavan, Deputy Secretary General of the Lao People's Party (Phak Pasason Lao-PPL), typical of the Communist leaders who remained behind in the strategic base area of Sam Neua in April 1974 while others entered the coalition government in Vientiane.

-Wide World.

Prabang did engage in active propagandizing activities for their side. This was done mainly under the guise of "explaining" to the populace the meaning of an 18-point program adopted by the National Political Consultative Council (NPCC), which had been set up under the coalition accords as an advisory body to the PGNU and had its headquarters in Luang Prabang. (Prince Souphanouvong, Chairman of the NLHS Central Committee, had assumed the leadership of the NPCC instead of joining the PGNU, and the NLHS exercised a predominant influence in its deliberations.) The days following the entry of the Pathet Lao contingents into Vientiane and Luang Prabang also saw a proliferation there of "political and mass organizations"-some 21 in all.

No less significant than the conduct of the NLHS representatives in Vientiane and Luang Prabang was the ethnic background of those chosen for these roles. In a country where roughly half the population belongs to various ethnic minorities, the exclusively lowland Lao composition of the NLHS contingent in the PGNU surprised some observers, particularly since the NLHS had, from its formation in 1956, paid assiduous attention to the enlistment of followers among the minorities, a number of whom had become members of the NLHS Central Committee. In choosing its representatives in the PGNU, however, the NLHS was almost certainly governed by the consideration that these representatives would be concerned with the administration of as well as with the extension of NLHS influence inthe lowland areas of the Mekong Valley thus far controlled by the rightist party and peopled largely by ethnic Lao.

The NLHS ministers in the PGNU were Phoumi Vongvichit (a member of the PPL Central Committee), Sot Phetrasy, Singkapo Sikotchounamaly, Maha Kou Souvannamethi, and Tiao Souk Vongsak-all well-known figures in Laos. Like Souphanouvong, Vongvichit had been a Cabinet minister in both previous coalition governments. Sot had had a longstanding working relationship with Souvanna Phouma dating from his years of service as NLHS representative in Vientiane from 1963 to 1973. Among those who did not come to Vientiane to represent the NLHS were Kaysone Phomvihan, the Secretary-General of the clandestine PPL; Nouhak Phoumsavan, the PPL's Deputy Secretary-General: and the remaining members of the PPL Central Committee (with the exception of Vongvichit and one other person mentioned later). These figures,

less acceptable both ethnically and politically in the rightist-held areas, remained in Sam Neua Province, waiting to make their appearance at a later stage of the Lao revolution."

The advantage of possessing a secure "base area" free from any but the most carefully controlled scrutiny of outside visitors became manifest as the NLHS reentered the game of Laotian politics after a decade in the jungle. From Sam Neua, Radio Pathet Lao poured forth daily commentary directed against the "rightist ultra-reactionaries" in Vientiane and Luang Prabang and other Mekong Valley towns which the NLHS was seeking to penetrate.' No similar outlet existed for the leaders of the rightist party because, while they remained in Vientiane and Luang Prabang, they were compelled to observe the "neutralized" status of these towns. (Radio Pathet Lao also maintained a hard line against the government of Thailand, which it could not have done if its commentaries had emanated from Vientiane.)

The Pathet Lao Offensive

This is how things stood in March 1975 when fighting broke out between the rightist and Pathet Lao forces. The fighting soon proved to be not an isolated clash, such as might have occurred by accident, but the beginning of a sustained Communist campaign. The actual fighting began along Route 7 in northern Laos, where the Meo forces of rightist Major General Vang Pao had managed to retain positions fairly close to the Plain of Jars. An NLHS delegate to the bipartite Central Joint Commission for the Implementation of the Agreement (CJCIA) stated that the fighting broke out on March 27. This would place it well after North Vietnam had begun moving its reserve divisions across the Demilitarized Zone in the wake of the debacle of

• That this time was approaching was hinted on July 3, 1975, when the PPL Central Committee announced that Phoumi Vongvichit, Souk Vongsak, and Sot Phetrasy were going abroad for extended periods, the first two for treatment of heart conditions, the third for a vacation. See dispatch of H. D. S. Greenway in The Washington Post (Washington, DC), July 7, 1975.

7 From soon after the signing of the 1973 agreements, Radio Pathet Lao broadcast commentaries attacking the "pressure" brought to bear on the Vientiane side of the coalition by the "ultrareactionary clique" identified with the Sananikones and other powerful families. See, for example, the PL Radio broadcast of October 25, 1973 (FBIS, op. cit., Oct. 26, 1973). After fighting resumed in March 1975, the attacks, of course, grew even sharper, focusing on rightist officials in provincial posts and, more important, in the Vientiane coalition Cabinet (see, for example, ibid., May 22 and 23, 1975).

the South Vietnamese Army in the defense of Banmethuot, and exactly two days after the South Vietnamese government abandoned Hue.

This sequence of events is probably more than coincidental. It is the author's guess that most of the key decisions affecting Communist initiatives in Laos have, in fact, been reached in Hanoi, and that the concordance of the PPL leaders was obtained only afterward. While we lack an archive analogous to the "Pentagon Papers" to prove this, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest a close functional relationship between the Vietnam Workers' Party and the PPL—a relationship much closer than the term "coordination" would imply. One can cite the high priority accorded to preservation of the Sam Neua base area (on the North Vietnamese border), the large amount of time spent by NLHS leaders in Hanoi, and the repeated coincidence of major Communist initiatives in Laos with developments elsewhere in Indochina. As one of the components of former French Indochina-and one with a long history of Vietnamese intervention as well as a sizable Vietnamese community-Laos has long been regarded by North Vietnam as an area of special security concern, as evidenced by Hanoi's efforts to see that its influence with the PPL has remained greater than that of either the Soviet or Chinese Communist parties. We also have the first-hand testimony of a former high-ranking Polish member of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Laos confirming the close attention given by Hanoi to events in Laos within the context of North Vietnam's Indochinawide policymaking."

The Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party, with the help of Soviet advisers, has over the years clearly developed considerable sophistication in analyzing the operation of the political system in the United States and the bearing of events there on the timing of major strategic shifts in the Indochina war. For its part, the small PPL has probably not been capable of so sophisticated an exercise. Although the USSR established a large embassy in Vientiane in 1962, staffed heavily with experts on American affairs, the main contacts of the PPL continued to be with Hanoi. Consequently, it is not unreasonable to infer that the judgments that led North Vietnam to accelerate dramatically its efforts in South Vietnam in March 1975 were communicated by Hanoi

• See Marek Thee, Notes of a Witness: Laos and the Second Indochinese War, New York, Random House, 1973.