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any obvious emanations of the Kaysone regime, apart from
new slogans for the 2 December festivities.
Discussions
4. In two working days Mr Dobbs arranged for me to call
on or meet virtually all the Western Heads of Mission in
residence, including the West German and Japanese Ambassa- dors and the Australian, US and Swedish Chargés d'Affaires. I also had a very useful session with the Malaysian Chargé, and met several of the other ASEAN representatives socially, including the Filipino Dean. The consistent message was that we should expect the regime to try to expand its con- tacts with the West over the coming five years, particularly through a greatly increased and heavily western-staffed UNDP
programme. There were also indications of willingness to
accept bilateral western aid, including short term technical assistance personnel. The Australian Chargé, Mr Lindsay, told me of a pumped irrigation project which had expanded
from a request for the hardware alone to two tranches of
technical assistance, on installation and on related irriga-
tion network design. People seemed to feel that the Laotian
regime, however realistic in its commitment to the Vietnamese political line, given the present power balance in the area,
were seeking to win the maximum economic freedom of action.
There was also general incomprehension of the Thai handling of the border closure earlier this year'.
5. It would be too much to say that this was clearly reflec-
ted in the three-quarters of an hour which Mr Dobbs and I had with Mr Soulivong, the Secretary-General (PUS), of the Laotian Foreign Ministry. We had a routine statement of differing positions on Cambodia, and I said a few nice things about the Laotian Chargé in London. When Mr Soulivong raised the question of aid, I reminded him of the offer from Mr Malcolm MacDonald, as President of VSO, to restart the prog-
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