Lao envoy wants US help on information on planned bombings Laotian Ambassador to Thailand Hiem Phommachanh [position and name as received] has asked Washington to tell his government should it learn of planned bomb attacks in Laos. In an interview with The Nation, Hiem said that as a friendly country having state-to-state relations with Laos the US should cooperate to prevent any recurrence of such incidents. He said Laos had been surprised at a US State Department announcement on 30 January that warned Americans of possible bomb attacks and advised them to avoid travelling to Laos' southern provinces. The statement said that the US government had credible reports that bomb attacks might occur in Savannaket, Champasak, Saravan and Sekong. "The lives of other people are also dear, not just those of US citizens," Hiem said. Laos has been rocked by a series of mysterious bombings. Hiem said Vientiane was treating the explosions as acts of terrorism as no one had claimed responsibility and the government believed the intention was to cause disturbance, not to force a solution to any problem. But a leading dissident said she expected to see more violence taking place in future as more and more government officials and members of the ruling Communist Party were disgruntled with the leadership. In a telephone interview with The Nation from Germany, Bounthone Chanthavixay, president of the Worldwide Coordinating Committee for Independence and Democracy in Laos, said the latest bombing at the Friendship Bridge, which severely injured more than a dozen of people, mostly Thais, was a sign of more to come. The organization is an umbrella group of Lao dissident units abroad. Bounthone said the appalling economic on and lack of political freedom in the country had forced some pro-democracy activists to turn violent as a means of forcing the government to reconsider its options. Also the younger generation of leaders and academics inside the country is becoming more frustrated, she said. "Though we don't support the use of violence for political means, we do understand the situation they are in," Bounthone said. Over the past year a number of explosions have rocked the capital in what is seen as an attempt to discredit the ruling Lao Revolutionary Party's hold on power. Bounthone insisted that the violent events were home-grown. She dismissed allegations that dissidents living abroad were behind the incidents. The former student leader, who was sent to Europe for graduate studies more than a decade ago but ended up joining the anti-Vientiane movement, reiterated the dissidents' stance. She urged the government to seek a peaceful compromise with overseas-based pro-democracy groups that called for a multiparty system. She said a number of pro-democracy groups had sprung up in Europe and America to call for democracy in Laos and international human-rights and pro-democracy groups had joined them in urging their respective governments to demand change in Laos but the Vientiane government had shown no sign of giving in and had called the dissidents "menaces" who liked to cause disturbances. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
