Thai-Lao Relations: A Lao View

Abstract

To negotiate without the services of interpreters is, perhaps, one of the rare privileges characteristic of relations between Laos and Thailand, which other Asian nations do not have. Regrettably, as in a quarrel between neighbors over their common wall so well know to jurists, relative similarity between the two languages does not necessarily presuppose mutual understanding. That is what in effect follows from a recent, and probably not the last, conflict involving the Kingdom of Thailand and the Lao People's Democratic Republic, which so far has been highlighted by three major events: first, an occupation on June 6, 1984, by the 1st Thai Cavalry Division of three villages with a population of 2,000 people defended by the Lao local militia; then nonstop negotiations initiated in Bangkok on July 21 and attended by a Lao governmental delegation headed by Soubanh Srithirath, the deputy foreign minister; and finally, the continued presence of the Lao delegation in its embassy in the Thai capital despite the fact that Thailand broke off the negotiations on August 15.1 Whatever the possible outcome of the episode, the most serious one in the relations between the two countries, it is interesting to analyze the other side of a rather special relationship between these two