Victories Victories Consolidai

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reactionary intrigues of various with fuel and some foodstufts. •The abolition of the monarchy in Laos - together with the accelerated plans for the reunification of Vietnam announced last month - marks the political consolidation of the regimes in Indochina following the victories of the liberation forces in May.

With the abdication of King Savang Vatthana on December 3rd the shadow of the Laotion:royal state - which had existed in one forn or another since 1353 - was laid to rest, and this brought to an end also the polite fiction of a coalition of 'national unity' between royalists and the Peoples Revolutionary Party (ie the Communist Party).

The Pathet Lao and Communist Party leadership have thus abandoned the promise, in their 1964 programme, to 'respect and preserve the throne Forced But this much delayed step is one that has been forced reluctantly on them, mainly by the continued On December 3rd Grigori members of the numerous royal family and entourage, and by the provocations and hostility of the pro-imperialist Pramoj government in neighbouring Thailand.

The Thai government, while willingly receiving right-wing refugees and their property, has effectively sealed off the border along the Mekong river (which forms the southern part of the Thai-Laotian frontier) thus creating severs ditiiculties in supplying Laos, especially est harvest since 1965 disaster.

The Soviet bureaucracy blames last summer's drought. It certainly contributed; but so did the bureaucratic organisation of agriculture which has for decades held back the country's huge potential for food The USSR now needs 60 million tons of grain. At current world prices this& would cost about 1.5 billion dollars to supply normal consumption. So far, deals have been made with Argentina, Canada, Australia and the US to buy 15 million tons.

If the USSR attempted to buy the other 45 millions on the open market the world-wide effect on food prices and the cost of living would be enormous.

The alternative to the open Ousted puppet Lon Nol flees Cambodia to exile.

Pressure This pressure from the forces of the counter-revolution has forced a basic shake-up in the government. Former 'neutralist' Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma - whose son fled to Thailand at the end of November - is relegated to a purely honorific role as 'counsellor'; so is the abdicated king.

The new 'People's Republic NO SAST the government are held by Communist Party officials.

No "Sociali However, in the new programme issued by the Communist Party, the word "socialism' does not appear. The "immediate tasks' are spelled out as 'the rejection of American neo-imperialist economy, control 'in a suitable manner of interest rates and large landed property, the struggle against spies, saboteurs and 'decadent culture'.

The US government, which has maintained its diplomatic mission in the capital Vientiane during all the changes of government, is invited to "contribute: to healing thr war wounds which they have inflicted on Laos'.

The political obstacles racing the social revolution in the newlyliberated states of South East Asia are expressed in the nationalist and Stalinist policies of the regimes there.

But their basic source lies in the division and betrayal of the wi orld revolution by the Stalinist gov ernments of the major workers sta ies -the Soviet Union and China.

The alignments of Laos and Vietnam with Moscow, and of China, centring on the possession of islands in the South China Sea (the area of ocean fringed by the south coast of China and the long eastern seaboard of Vietnam).

Seized

As the US puppet regime in South Vietnam crumbled last Janpart of China. Hanoi mildly protested, but could do little. But as victory in the south approached the North Vietnamese navy occupied the Spratly Islands, further south, also claimed by China.

And at the beginning of December a sharp editorial in Peking's People's Daily declared that "We allow no-one, whatever the excuses to invade and occupy our territory"

Though ostensibly concerned with the Paracels, the article was clearly directed at Vietnamese control of the Spratlys, which Peking fears will become a Soviet military base off their southern flank.

Neither of the groups of islands is of any economic importance. But the animosity between Soviet and Chinese Stalinism, and their. competition for: a favoured relationship with US imperialism, make them the source of grave splits in the defence against imperialism in South East Asia.

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uary, China seized the Paracel Islands, claiming them as historically