THAILAND: Appointment in Bangkok

This week in Bangkok, the gaily colored, spike-towered capital of Thailand, eight non-Communist nations with vital interests in Southeast Asia are gathering to decide on practical measures for blocking further Communist expansion in that uneasy area.

The pact that brought them together is the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (which the U.S. State Department would like to have called the Manila Pact, though popular usage persistently makes it SEATO). It was formally ratified and put into force in Manila last week, uniting three stoutly anti-Communist Asian nations—Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan—with powerful overseas friends: the U.S., Britain. France, Australia and...

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