In a mildewed villa in Laos' capital city of Vientiane sits a bland, tired-eyed Premier named Prince Souvanna Phouma. He says his neutralist government wants to make peace with everybody, including the Communists. He has the support of two crack paratroop battalions, one of them under command of Captain Kong Le, whose coup last August brought Souvanna Phouma to power.

Down in the south is the country's top soldier, General Phoumi Nosavan, 40, who does not like Communists and says that the prince in Vientiane cannot tell a Red from a banyan tree....