Laos: The White Elephant

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To please Souvanna, any new government will have to be broad-based, which in Laos means including as many important families as possible, as well as some Pathet Lao, at least in minor positions. To avoid argument over whether Souvanna or Boun Oum is the "legitimate" Premier, both sides would deal through King Savang Vatthana. Any solution is likely to be makeshift. Says one U.S. diplomat: "Laos is going to be a problem throughout our lifetime and longer." But for Laos to be declared neutral is not necessarily an inevitable step toward a Communist takeover. The Pathet Lao, still a tiny minority, are generally disliked in the areas they control. Within the past year, the U.S. has begun the kind of aid program that could in time have some grass-roots effect: an $8,600,000 all-weather road between Thakhet and Nam Ca Dinh. Fortnight ago, the U.S. granted $1,000,000 toward a rural development program of small dams, wells, schools.

And pro-Western King Savang Vatthana is still widely loved by his countrymen for the same phlegmatic qualities that make him the despair of foreign diplomats. Last week, on the inscrutable advice of his bonzes, the saffron-clad Buddhist priests who abound in Luangprabang, Savang Vatthana decided that, whatever Westerners may think, the signs were propitious for Laos. He announced that at long last he would cremate his father.

He ordered workmen to build temporary housing to accommodate the 6,000 dignitaries he expects from all over the world. Six weeks hence, when the guests gather in a field outside the town, the torch will be touched, and the old King, in his gilded coffin carved from a sandalwood trunk chosen by the bonzes as predestined to receive the royal body, will go up in scented smoke.

That will climax seven days of feasting, since in Laos, death is thought to be a release, and a portent of happier times.