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After the first Geneva conference in 1954, the Reds precariously held only parts of the two northern Laotian provinces of Samneua and Phongsaly. Last week they controlled at least half of Laos, and what remains is only precariously free. At the second Geneva conference, the West would be confronted with the blek reality once enunciated by U.S. General Walter Bedell Smith: "Diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be gained or held on the battlefield."
But there was small inclination among the U.S.'s allies to save Laos on the battle field. Britain and France have already written Laos off and want only to cut their losses. U.S. strategists talk of saving southern Laos, with the help of South Vietnamese and Thai troops, tried to add verisimilitude to this bargaining point last week by dispatching 30 huge C-130 turboprops to Vientiane carrying military and medical equipment. But the U.S. military, too, had no inclination to commit U.S. fighting men to a wasting guerrilla war in the Laotian jungles.
* The other twelve: U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Poland, India, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, North and South Viet Nam.