Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
neutral government, not a Cold War pawn; a settlement concluded at the conference table and
not on the battlefield.”
The US had already begun to hedge its bets, however. Lao army troops were training in
Thailand, US army advisers had arrived with new weapons and a handful of planes, and the
CIA launched
Operation Momentum
,
which established a
clandestine army
recruited from
the Hmong.
Two months after Kennedy's speech, a
second conference
was convened at
Geneva
, but
despite the determination of the Soviet Union and the US to neutralize tensions over Laos, it
took a year and a decisive defeat for the Royalist army at Luang Namtha before the feuding
Lao factions reached an agreement on the formation of a
secondcoalitiongovernment
. The
second coalition, however, was a failure, dissolving after the April 1963 assassination of a
neutralist cabinet member. Fearing arrest or assassination, Pathet Lao ministers fled the cap-
ital.
