Laos

"Mr. Khrushchev thinks more like Richelieu and Metternich than like Woodrow Wilson," Walter Lippmann writes after his Moscow visit. Certainly the Russian Premier is handling the current Russian-British exchanges on Laos with coolness and detached calculation. Indeed, the deliberation with which both sides in the neotiations are unravelling each knot in the Laotian crisis almost justifies the British government's faith that a settlement is immanent. The importance of a cease-fire, the return of the international commission to Laos, and a 14-power conference to settle the future of that faction-torn land--all are, in vaguest outline, agreed on. The latest Russian note indicates that Khrushchev is willing to be reasonable though unhurried.

Precisely why Khrushchev is so willing to wait in Laos is not difficult to see. In part, of course, it is because he is still engaged in talks with Souvanna Phouma. But, as his letter to President Kennedy on Cuba indicates, the spectre of Cuba is now hovering over all Cold War diplomatic exchanges, and everyone realizes that the United States cannot reserve the right to intervene in Cuba and at the same time take any strong exception to Soviet aid to the Pathet Lao. It is hardly possible, as Khruschev's Cuban note said, to handle matters in such a way as to extinguish a conflagration in one area only to kindle fires in another. Cuba and Laos are parallel enough to reveal why it is in Khruschev's interest to move patiently; but by the same token, it is in the West's interest to drive as quickly as it can for a Laotian settlement, whatever happens in Cuba.

The West insists, and rightly, that the commission must proclaim a cease-fire before the 14-power conference begins. It wants no repetition of the Diem Bien Phu disaster: the Geneva Conference in '54 started before the contending armies had agreed to cease fire, and the Communists took advantage of the lull to attack and surround the French fortress. The Russians have stepped up supply shipments to Northern Laos in the past few days, making the case-fire all the more important. And, since there is only light fighting at the present, despite rumors of a new rebel offensive, the cease-fire is still relatively easy to arrange. Another ground for optimism is the fact that all the armed forces fighting in Laos are dependent on outside supplies flown in by air; once the international commission can establish controls on the few airfields in Northern Laos, then an operational cease-fire will have been effected.

When the shooting has stopped, the conference will begin. Souvanna Phouma will have returned by then and can attempt to bring the Laotian factions together into his government. Whatever comes of it, both Russia and the West realize that this conference is probably the last chance for a settlement in Laos.