Laos Realities

Laos Realities

FPJ BureauUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 02:43 PM IST
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Shri Nehru’s immediate reaction to Mr. Harold Macmillan’s proposal to end the Laotian stalemate bristles with stark realism. The Indian Prime Minister will not countenance any suggestion that India should send somebody in an informal capacity to Laos and report on the situation; that was exactly what the British Prime Minister’s proposal appeared to suggest. In his response to Prince Norodom Sibanouk’s feelers for calling a 14-nation conference on Laos, Mr. Macmillan hoped that his Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, would soon be able to invite the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Andrei Gromyko “to join him (Lord Home) in asking the Indian Prime Minister to take the measures which would be required.” The unfortunate impression this conveys is that Mr. Macmillan was seeking the good offices of the Soviet Foreign Minister to contrive a situation in which Britain and the Soviet Union, the two Co-Chairmen of the Geneva Conference (1954), could abdicate their joint –responsibility and thus leave Shri Nehru, the most insistent advocate of the reconvening of the International Commission on Laos, to face the music. Indeed, it is not suggested that Mr. Macmillan was not motivated by the best of intentions. The fact that he has now come around to viewing the Laotian crisis from Shri Nehru’s angle and fully recognizes the need for the return of the International Control Commission to Laos bears ample testimony to his good faith.

That the Macmillan proposal, however impracticable, is a clear departure from the holier-than-thou attitude adopted earlier by Lord Home when warning the Soviet Union against intervention in Laos is evident from his feelers to Mr. Gromyko. It may be relevant to mention here, in passing, that the factors which may have influenced a change in the British outlook are the Soviet indifference to the British warning; the realization that the outgoing Republican administration  of the US would not be able to impose a decisive military solution on Laos; and, above all, the cautious reticence of the incoming Kennedy team. Mr. Macmillan’s proposal is based on the fact that India, as Chairman of the Control Commission, must undertake the immediate task of bringing a semblance of peace in Laos.

19 January, 1961

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