Office of the Historian

326. Telegram From the Embassy in Laos to the Department of State1

Vientiane, January 29, 1960—2 p.m.

2108. For Cumming and Parsons. During my dinner in his and Minister Information Nouphat’s honor January 27, Vice Premier Nhouy directly requested me to “grant him a very special favor” (une grace importante), namely that of suspending all Americal moral and material support to Lao political parties as such, above all to the CDNI. As long as such backing continued, Nhouy asserted, it would be impossible for him to achieve his basic task of bringing about national favor among the Conservative forces. Once support from abroad eased, CDNI, LHL and Military would have to join together and work in harmony. Of course, he admitted, RLG would still need assistance from US if it was to win out at next elections but such assistance should be given to government-designated candidates and not to any party. To reinforce his argument, Nhouy cited one example from 1955 elections when Phoui was receiving assistance of over 3,000,000 kip from French, while Katay was obtaining an unspecified amount from US. Thus Nhouy’s strenuous efforts at that time to get Phoui and Katay to team up were doomed to failure.2

I stated that, assuming Nhouy was making same request of other friendly missions here who might have been or may even still be providing backing to political parties in Laos, I would endeavor find out just what if any support was being accorded to Lao political parties at present time by US.

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[1 paragraph (2½ lines of source text) not declassified]

Smith
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 751J.00/1–2960. Secret; [distribution indicator not declassified].↩
  2. The following marginal note appears on the source text in Parsons’ hand: “Nhouy tried hard[?] to bridge the gap in my tenure. J.G.P.”↩