While its Communist neighbors, Red China and North Viet Nam, hurled threats by radio, tiny Laos last week tried desperately to set its house in order. Tough, grizzled General Ouane Rattinkoun, 34, veteran of jungle battles against the French, Chinese, North Viet Nam Reds, and the home-grown Communists of the Pathet Lao, was ordered to solve by force a problem that had not yielded to nearly two years of diplomacy. His task: to integrate into the 25,000 man Royal Laotian army two Communist battalions.
Valley Exit. The integration had been promised in the November 1957 agreement between the government and...
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