Because the shelling and shooting by the Communist-led insurgents are blind, there are always more civilian casualties than military losses in Neak Luong, as isolated town on the Mekong River, about 38 miles southeast of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. There is no evacuation plan for the 30,000 civilians, mostly refugees from the countryside. They spend most of their daily lives underground — in sandbagged bunkers, in trenches under their stilted houses, or deep inside partly destroyed buildings, but still the shells and bullets find them. It is a town where fear has become so normal that people hardly ever talk about it any more. There is no government evacuation plan for the 30,000 people, mostly refugees from the countryside, who have massed in this isolated Mekong River town 38 miles southeast of Phnom Penh. A few can bribe their way out on government helicopters, but the rest are trapped here until whatever is going to happen happens.
A month ago, in the early days of the siege of Neak Luong, the danger was all from the insurgents’ shelling. Now there are new enemies —hunger and disease. A fraction of the civilians — about 6,000 — are being fed at subsistence level by a humanitarian agency, Catholic Relief Services, whose American‐provided supplies will stretch only that far. The rest of the civilians are living far below subsistence, on rice gruel or less. Every child in Neak Luong is in some stage of malnourishment. “He’s the best we have here,” said a Filipino nurse, pointing to a bony 6-year-old boy hanging around the small Catholic relief hospital in hope of a handout. “He’s in good health by our standards.” The children gather by the dozens around a Western newsman, holding out their hands like the mendicants they have been forced to become.
Some have swollen bellies. Some are shrunken. A 10‐ year‐old girl has dehydrated to the size of a 4‐year‐old. Harsh bronchial coughs come from their throats, marking the beginnings of pneumonia and tuberculosis. All have dysentery. Their noses run continuously. Their skin has turned scaly. Every scratch on their legs and arms becomes an ulcer. Without help, these children are slipping toward death. Others have already died. Malnutrition is serious in Phnom Penh, the capital. But in Neak Luong it will soon become a disaster unless enough fobd is brought in to sustain these people adequately.
Some food is supplied by parachute drops and by helicopter, but almost all of this is for the military garrison. The civilians, as always in this five‐year war, have no priority. A few shops remain open in the center of town, but their owners are acting out of habit, for they have nothing of present value to sell—only old stocks of rubber sandals, beer, flashlight batteries and toothpaste. Even when some rice does find its smuggled way to the market, it costs twice as much as in Phnom Penh, and very few can afford to buy it.
Neak Luong is the Phnom Penh Government’s last major post on the lower Mekong. There are a few military beachheads father down the river, but their hold is tenuous. From the start of this year’s insurgent offensive on New Year’s Day, the Cambodian rebels seized control of two‐thirds of the 60‐mile stretch of river from Phnom Penh tothe border with South Vietnam. By emplacing heavy guns on the banks, and more recently by mining the water, the insurgents have blockaded the river, which used to serve as the route for 80 per cent or more of Phnom Penh’s vital supplies of food, fuel and ammunition—all provided by American aid. No river convoys have made the trip upstream from South Vietnam for nearly a month.
Phnom Penh is being temporarily supplied by airlift, however, and it already had sizable stocks on hand when the blockade began. Neak Luong’s stocks are marginal and the town lives from day to day. The occasional rockets that fall on Phnom Penh bear no resemblance to the steady shelling and machine‐gun fusillades that rain on Neak Luong around the clock. Every building is marked with bullet and shrapnel holes — “air conditioning” as is is sardonically called here. Though the government forces will probably be able to hold Neak Luong, since they have enough heavy artillery and napalm bombs to keep the enemy forces from fighting their way in, they have been unable to push the insurgents out of shelling range. In fact, the insurgents are closer than they were a month ago, particularly northwest and east of the town. A month ago, there was only shelling from a distance: now the town is in range of close‐in rifle fire.
Still, there is no noticeable panic here, for Cambodians are given more to fatalism than hysteria. “Sir, please be careful, the bullets are coming this way,” a Cambodian refugee worker says politely but without urgency to a visitor. “Our work gets interrupted all the time,” says the doctor at the Relief Hospital matterof‐factly. “Rockets fall and we have to run for cover.” The doctor’s wooden barracks hospital has a good deal of “air‐conditioning.” Even as he talks, a rocket explodes about 100 yards away. And somewhere else in town there are new wounded and dead. In a meadow on the northern edge of Neak Luong, a dozen gravely wounded soldiers lie on stretchers, awaiting evacuation by helicopter. They wait for a long ‘time, and as they wait blood drips steadily through their bandages. “Help me, help me,” a young soldier with a bleeding stomach wound cries out again, his head tossing in pain. A medical corpsman standing beside him bends over slightly and waves away the flies that keep gathering on the bandage.
Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger said today that Cambodia would “absolutely” fall into Communist hands if Congress did not provide the $222‐million in military aid requested by the Administration. Mr. Schlesinger’s words were the strongest used publicly so far by any Administration official in justifying the new funds for the Lon Nol Government. Appearing on ABC’s “Issues and Answers” television program, Mr. Schlesinger also said he had ordered the United States armed services to make the enlistment period three years instead of two years and he rejected a proposal to impose a six‐month moratorium on arms sales to Persian Gulf nations. He said that the loss of Cambodia would be a foreign‐policy disaster for the United States and, by implication, that Congress would be responsible. Mr. Schlesinger based his case on the so‐called domino, theory, which he said had been “overly discredited.” The fall of Indochina, he said, would make the word of the United States “suspect” in the Middle East, China and elsewhere.
The Administration has asked Congress for 5300‐million in emergency supplemental aid for South Vietnam and $222‐million for Cambodia. The proposal has so far received little Congressional support. Mr. Schlesinger, who is widely known for his candor and bluntness, gave several other flat responses to questions. In defending the Pentagon’s $104.7‐billion budget request, he maintained that détente with, the Soviet Union rested on an “equilibrium of force.” The implication was that détente would quickly evaporate if the Russians got the upper hand militarily. The standard Administration position is that detente rests on the mutual interest of the United States and the Soviet Union in avoiding nuclear war.
Mr. Schlesinger rejected a proposal made yesterday by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, for a six‐month moratorium on arms sales to the Persian Gulf countries pending a policy review. “We are engaged in attempting to maintain influence in these areas, to maintain close relationships, and arms represents a symbol of those kinds of relationships,” the Secretary said. He also emphasized that if the United States did not sell the arms, others would. In response, Mr. Kennedy issued a statement saying that “the truly disastrous policy would be to sell arms—and provide American personnel—without a clear understanding of U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf.”
“If the Secretary can explain his policy, he should explain it to the Congress,” Mr. Kennedy said. “If he is worried that other countries would replace the United States in the Persian Gulf arms markets, then let them try to work out limits with other supplier states. This has never been tried.”
Greek Cypriot refugees appealed to the United Nations to prevent the seizure of their homes by mainland Turks in the occupied part of Cyprus. The protest was made by the Pan-Cyprian Refugee Committee, which represents the 200,000 Greek Cypriots forced to abandon their homes as a result of the Turkish invasion and occupation of nearly half the island last summer.
A Turkish diplomat described the embargo on arms shipments to Turkey ordered by Congress as “a hostile thing normally reserved for fools and enemies, not for friends.” Advin Yegen, Turkish charge d’affaires in Washington, said what he called the pro-Greek lobby in Congress was “regretfully successful” in damaging Turkish-U.S. relations American arms shipments were stopped February 5 as a result of continuing impasse in talks between Turkish and Greek Cypriots.
A teenage boy was shot to death and scores of townspeople were injured in Erzincan, eastern Turkey, when a political argument turned into a major street battle, police said. The rioting was triggered by a downtown quarrel between a handful of leftist and rightist youths who were later joined by thousands of residents in a running fight, a police spokesman said.
When negotiations resume on the future of United States military operations in Greece, American diplomats expect the Greeks to demand significant changes in the size of those operations and the way they are managed.
Three days after West German police had dispersed a crowd of 150 people from the Wyhl proposed nuclear power plant site, more than 28,000 protesters arrived to carry on the occupation. For years thereafter, a core group would occupy the site, supplemented by more protesters on the weekends, before Wyhl was finally abandoned.
Government officials in Madrid ordered the monarchist newspaper ABC to remove an entire section of its Sunday edition because it contained an interview with the head of the Spanish royal family, sources at the newspaper said. In the interview, Count Don Juan of Barcelona, now living in exile in Portugal, supported bringing democracy to Spain and warned that slowing this process would be a “tremendous” and very costly error.
Foreign Minister Yigal Allon of Israel restated his country’s readiness today to contribute to an interim settlement in the Middle East by withdrawing from present lines on the Suez front. He also held out the prospect of “further steps,” but said concessions by Israel depended “on Egyptian return measures, both political and strategic.” The Israeli official spoke at a briefing at the close of the Socialist International, a conference of Socialist party leaders, which was held in West Berlin at the invitation of Willy Brandt, former West Germany Chancellor and now chairman of that nation’s Social Democrats. Mr. Alton said to newsmen that he would not accept any formal guarantees of Israel’s existence by the United States or any other third country, unless “Israel is capable to defend itself.”
The commander of a group on its way to seize hostages inside Israel was killed in a clash with Israeli troops in Galilee, the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in Damascus, Syria. The statement said the guerrillas intended to take hostages to trade for five people in Israeli prisons, including Greek Catholic Archbishop Hilarion Capucci of Jerusalem, who is serving 12 years for smuggling arms to Palestinian guerrillas.
Israeli helicopters skimmed over the northern Sinai Desert searching for more than 20 Bedouin Arabs missing after a flash flood on El Arish River swept through their encampments. Nine persons are known dead in the most severe flooding of the normally arid zone in 60 years. Defense Minister Shimon Peres toured the worst-hit area and promised aid. Tent villages were washed away and herds of sheep and camels were lost in the torrent that surged over dry riverbeds after a heavy rain Saturday.
The Joint United States-Saudi Arabian Economic Commission will hold its meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Washington amid official hopes that it will restore some of the luster to a special relationship. The meeting is expected to result in formal approval of technical assistance for vocational training, establishment of a scientific center in Saudi Arabia and the development of water resources to enable Saudi Arabian agriculture to expand.
Despite opposition in India, the United States will announce the lifting of its 10 year arms embargo against Pakistan. State Department officials said that the decision had been relayed to both India and Pakistan and that the action was intended to bolster Pakistan’s sense of security. Because of the outcry anticipated in India, which has been strongly opposed to any arms sales to Pakistan, instructions were sent last week to William Saxbe, the new American Ambassador to India, who was on his way there, to delay his arrival in New Delhi until after the decision had been made public.
The world’s only Hindu king was crowned today in a sunlit courtyard in Katmandu, Nepal, that echoed with sacred Vedic chants and cannon salvos. From daybreak in this Himalayan valley capital the 29-year-old King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev and dozens of Hindu priests had been moving through a series of exquisitely delicate rituals that culminated when the monarch walked slowly up to his golden throne, with its canopied backrest in the form of a hooded, 10‐headed cobra. King Birendra bowed, and the royal high priest fixed the plumed crown on the monarch’s head. The crown is a hemet of diamonds, Pearl, rubbies and emeralds. “I shall tend to the growth of the country, regarding it as God himself,” the Harvardeducated monarch said in sanskrit. This day, forever and always.”
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana urged the United States to reduce its force of 4,500 men on Taiwan as a new step toward improving relations with Peking. Mansfield cited the U.S.-China “Shanghai Communique” of 1972 as calling for a reduction of U.S. military forces in the area around China. But in the same interview, he rejected suggestions that the United States should sever diplomatic relations with the Nationalist regime on Taiwan.
The military police began investigations today to determine whether there were political implications to yesterday’s unsuccessful hijacking of a Brazilian airliner at the inland capital of Brasilia.
Two policemen and a civilian bystander were fatally shot in separate attacks in Argentina apparently involving terrorist guerrillas. In La Plate gunmen fired at a police car, missed the two policemen inside and killed a pedestrian. One of the slain policemen was shot down in Rosario and the other in Cordoba. In every case the assassins escaped.
Ethiopian jet fighter-bombers and heavily armed troops pressed a daylong attack on guerrilla strongholds northwest of Asmara today for the second time in three days. Knowledgeable Ethiopian and foreign sources said the planes began the attack at dawn, striking guerrilla positions near the village of Adi Cushet, some four miles from Asmara, the capital of the northern province of Eritrea. The sources reported that Government infantry units then moved into the area. One of the Government’s heaviest attacks in three weeks of fighting was mounted in the same general region Friday. Strongholds of the Eritrean Liberation Front, the major guerrilla group, are near key highways leading from Asmara to the cities of Keren, near the Sudanese border, and Massawa, the province’s northern port on the Red Sea. The results of the Ethiopian Government’s consistent attacks in this region could not be determined today. The Government has refused to issue reports on the progress of the virtual civil war.
One of Angola’s important black nationalist leaders, who had been struggling to take over his liberation movement, has announced that he and his troops are joining a rival liberation organization. The leader, Daniel Chipenda, a former vice president of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola said in Kinshasa, Zaire, on Friday that his insurgent faction of the Popular Movement would be “integrated” into the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, headed by Holden Roberto. The step may lessen the possibility of new violent clashes by giving Mr. Chipenda’s small army a legal status it had lacked and the protection of the powerful forces of the National Front. But it does not appear to simplify an already complex political situation in this southern African territory of about six million people.
Commerce Secretary Frederick B. Dent forecast an 8.25% top in the nation’s unemployment rate and predicted that the recession would bottom out in the second quarter of this year. Dent pushed for adoption of President Ford’s economic proposals by saying. “We have to get off dead center on this. Every day we let go is causing that much more energy to be purchased from the Mideast.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger accused Congress today of taking “no action whatever” to meet the “imperative” need for more Federal judges, and of then passing “unnecessary” speedy trial legislation that may throw the courts into a “crisis” unless funds to implement it are appropriated immediately.
Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. (D-Texas) said he supported a “fully rebatable” gasoline tax starting at 5 cents a gallon and reaching 20 cents after four years. Bentsen, one of five announced candidates for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. added that such a gradually imposed tax would cause less economic disruption than President Ford’s proposals for reducing oil imports. The senator, speaking on the news program Face the Nation, said Mr. Ford’s proposal to cut oil imports 1 million barrels a day would mean “another half a million people out of work.”
The Executive Council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. proposed that control over oil imports be taken away from private industry and given to the government. This was one of a series of recommendations by the council for a comprehensive national energy policy. Initially, the council said, the government should determine the amount of oil to be imported, negotiate its price and provide for internal distribution.
Richard M. Nixon spent yesterday evening with friends at the estate of Walter H. Annenberg, former Ambassador to Britain, before returning to the seclusion of his villa at San Clemente. Fellow guest Bob Hope said it looked as if Nixon needed a lot of rest.
Daylight saving time began in the United States two months earlier than usual, as a result of a 1974 vote in Congress to amend the 1973 Emergency Year-Round Daylight Saving Time Act. In response to the 1973 energy crisis, Congress had passed emergency legislation to move clocks ahead one hour on January 6, 1974 and to leave them there until April 27, 1975, with no provision for a “fall back” to standard time in October. Following complaints, Congress voted to allow clocks to be turned back, as originally scheduled in October, albeit for only four months rather than six.
Swollen by the addition of thousands of extra staff aides in recent years, the Congressional bureaucracy is about to overflow Capitol Hill. Last week Congress began a move to commandeer a warehouse five blocks from the Capitol in which the staffs of some of the less important committees could be housed. It would be the first time that Congress moved operations away from Capitol Hill, where only a decade ago the huge Rayburn House Office Building was erected to fulfill the need for space for years to come. “We have created a monster. Now we have to house it some place,” Representative John T. Myers, Republican of Indiana, said in a debate on the new offices. In the last five years, Congress has created six committees, one board, eight offices and three commissions. In the early nineteen‐forties, 400 persons worked for Congressional committees. Today they employ about 2,000 of the 20,000 Congressional workers.
Ford Motor Co. will begin recalling workers from indefinite layoffs in March, when the firm plans to increase auto production 50% above this month’s low levels, the company announced. A spokesman confirmed plans by the No. 2 automaker to build 150,000 cars next month. The March figure, however, still would be 21% below the 191,000 cars built in March, 1974, when fuel shortages already had depressed car output. Ford President Lee A. lacocca said the step-up would allow the company to recall some of the 35,375 (out of 177,000) hourly workers put on open-ended layoff. “Our dealer stocks are now down by 75,000 cars and by April we will be able to sell all we build,” he said.
Wildlife authorities, using a spray plane, a helicopter and 11 boats, killed 3,000 more sick mots at the Back Bay wildlife refuge near Virginia Beach, Virginia. The operation to destroy the diseased water birds began Saturday in an effort to prevent an avian cholera epidemic from spreading to a quarter-million migratory fowl expected to arrive in the area soon. William Whalen, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said about 22,500 diseased coots had been picked up and destroyed since the epidemic was first noticed on February 4.
A one-lane wooden plank bridge over the Yadkin River at Siloam, North Carolina collapsed, throwing several cars into the water and killing at least three persons, according to the state Highway Patrol. Mrs. Katie Smith, who lives near the 300-foot bridge, said the span was erected in the 1930s and that work crews had replaced the wooden planking only last month. When the planks were replaced, she said, “they said some of the beams was cracked and they put in new beams and replanked it.”
California is making an intense effort to shift the preponderance of its educational resources toward the very young on the ground that it is better to diagnose and correct learning problems during a child’s first few years in school than provide costly remedial programs later. This may force some fundamental rethinking of American schooling, which spends more money on older pupils than beginners.
Professional price-fixing by lawyers, stockbrokers and mutual fund operators is under legal challenge before the Supreme Court in a group of cases that could subject the price-fixers to antitrust prosecution for the first time. Although the Department of Justice initiated only one of the lawsuits, the attack on mutual fund practices, the government has joined homeowners protesting high legal fees and small investors protesting the cost of buying and selling back.
Born:
Robert Lopez, American composer (“Frozen”), youngest ever to become an EGOT (Emmy; Grammy; Oscar; and Tony Awards winner), in Manhattan, New York, New York.
Dave Maurer, MLB pitcher (San Diego Padres, Cleveland Indians, Toronto Blue Jays), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
John Reeves, NFL linebacker (San Diego Chargers), in Bradenton, Florida.
Pat Barnes, NFL quarterback (San Francisco 49ers), in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Michael Cornacchia, American actor and voice actor (“Happy Feet”), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
History Diaries 