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deploying additional forces to Southeast Asia, and requesting a congressional resolution were held in abeyance pending that meeting. One of the kinds of developments which the ExCom thought would necessitate a flexible approach to its proposed action sequence occurred prior to the Honolulu Meeting.

Its effect was to remove some of the "crisis management" pressure from further policy deliberations. On 27 May, the Polish Government proposed a conference format for Laos that avoided many of the undesirable features of the Geneva proposals which had been supported by communist governments in the past. After two days of deliberations, during which time Secretary Rusk departed for Nehru's funeral in New Delhi, a policy group composed of several ExCom members determined that the United States should attempt initially "to treat [the] Lao question separately from [the] SVN-NVN problem." Reasoning that if [a] satisfactory Lao solution [were] not achieved, [a] basis should have been laid for possible subsequent actions that would permit our dealing more effectively with NVN with respect [to] both SVN and Laos, "the group decided to recommend to the President that he accept the Polish proposal. Integral to the approach would be a "clear expression of U.S. determination...that U.S. [is] not willing [to] write off Laos to [the] communists," and assurances to Souvanna Phouma "that we would be prepared to give him prompt and direct military support if the Polish Conference was [sic] not successful."

With respect to our larger objectives in Southeast Asia, the proposed discussions among representatives of Laos, the I.C.C. and the Geneva co-chairmen would have the advantage of permitting Scuvanna to continue to insist upon his preconditions for any resumed 14-nation conference, and would avoid the issue of Vietnam Rh