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What Sihanouk has been demanding for weeks is a 14-nation conference, preferably at Geneva, representing the major powers and his Southeast Asian neighbors, to guarantee Cambodian neutrality and settle some local border disputes. At various times, he announced he would (and would not) settle for a four-power meeting instead; proposed (and called off) two-power talks directly with South Viet Nam; set a deadline (and postponed it) for the convening of the 14-power conference; berated the U.S. and Britain for dragging their feet on the conference proposal. The U.S. opposes a large conference mostly because the Communists would be bound to entangle it in propaganda maneuvers concerning the war in South Viet Nam. From Moscow Nikita Khrushchev sent a message supporting the conference plan. And Charles de Gaulle, offering to work for a compromise, in a letter to Sihanouk counseled patience in the year's most magnificent diplomatic hyperbole: "I trust in the calm wisdom of Your Royal Highness."
In the meantime, His Royal Highness kept threatening: "I will go to Peking." Unless he gets satisfaction on his conference proposal, he said, he would reluctantly take Cambodia out of its neutralist position and move over into the Communist camp.
Maximum Trouble. The U.S. is not precisely quaking at the prospect. Cambodia already serves in effect as a refuge, staging area and partial supply line for the Viet Cong; although Sihanouk officially denies this, he unofficially promises that if he gets his way on the conference, he will then keep Cambodia from being so used. A formal tie with Red China, which he already calls "our No. 1 friend and protector," would aggravate but need not seriously affect the Vietnamese war. Besides, there is evidence that Red China does not really want a close embrace with Sihanouk, that it prefers the present situation in which Peking carries a minimum of responsibility for Cambodia while the little country causes a maximum amount of trouble for the West.
Then why not leave Sihanouk to his theatrics and ignore him? To some extent this is precisely what the U.S. is doing—to Sihanouk's mounting irritation. His vanity was particularly hurt when Bobby Kennedy failed to drop in during his recent trip to Malaysia. The temptation to write off Sihanouk as a temperamental dilettante and his country as a Far Eastern comic-opera setting is strong. To many, Sihanouk appears so eccentric that, as one Western diplomat puts it, "everyone wants to be his psychiatrist." Various theories have been developed to account for his moods, including the fact that every so often he goes on a crash diet; U.S. Foreign Service dispatches to Washington frequently start: "This being the diet season, it is useless ..." A man full of energy and diffuse talents, Sihanouk has been known at various times as a playboy, saxophonist, composer, lyricist, painter, sportsman, linguist, scenarist, cinematographer, Asian method actor and rice-bowl philosopher.