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the security of all Southeast Asia
will be endangered
if Laos loses
it's neutral independence
its own safety runs with the safety of us all
in real neutrality
observed by all
I wanna make it clear to the American people
and to all the world
that all we want in Laos is peace
not war
a truly neutral government
not a cold war pawn
a settlement concluded at the conference table
and not on the battlefield
now what president Kennedy did about Laos
was to get
an international agreement to cool things off
when he met Khrushchev in 1961, one thing they agreed on was not to let
Laos become an active theater of war
the result was the Geneva Accords of 1962
signed by fourteen countries including the United States, Russia
communist China and North Vietnam
these agreements provided for a neutral Laos governed by a coalition of three
princes representing the three main factions Boun Oum
the conservative
Souphanouvong the communist
and the naturalist Souvanna Phouma who became premier
the agreements also called for the withdrawal of all
foreign military personnel
the United States duly pull-out its six hundred and sixty-six advisers
but the North Vietnamese only remove a token forty of their six thousand
troops in Laos
thereafter Souphanouvong and the communists walked out of the coalition
government
and with Pathet Lao forces stiffen by increasing numbers of
North Vietnamese regulars
they've been holding two-thirds of the country and a quarter of the Laotians
population ever since
the purely laotian forces on either side are generally considered mediocre and
unaggressive
the best on the government side
clandestine army commanded by general Vang Pao
and fully paid, equipped
and advised by the United States
Pathet Lao although trained in North Vietnamese tactics and equipped with
Russian and Chinese weapons are not considered very formidable either
left to themselves the opposing laotian forces
would probably cancel each other out
the crucial factor in the equation is the sixty seven thousand North
Vietnamese regulars president Nixon says are in Laos now
in direct violation the president says of the 1962 Geneva agreements
in spite of American equipment advice and above all airpower
the North Vietnamese hold the military initiative in Laos today
United States is said to be flying an average of five hundred air sorties a
day sometimes as many as twenty thousand a month against targets in Laos
most of these strikes come from
U.S. bases across the mekong
river in Thailand
White House said that we made our first B52s strike last month
but U.S. airpower has still not been enough
to do more then slow down the North Vietnamese forces
in the past couple of weeks they've moved deeper into government territory
than they ever had
Bernard Cal
reports on the resulting situation and what it means