UN General Assembly
1961

59. Had it not been for the wisdom of some great and friendly statesmen, the civil war in Laos, which had been started and was being maintained from abroad, could have seriously endangered peace and international security. Here I should like, on behalf of His Majesty the King, the Government and the Laotian people, to express sincere thanks to His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Head of State of Cambodia, for his untiring efforts in helping my country to extricate itself from the present difficult situation. Without the happy initiative he took at the Conference of Fourteen Powers at Geneva,?/ our people, already hurt to the quick, would have had to continue enduring the sufferings of a fratricidal strife for a long time. But for his proposal [877th meeting] in this very hall during the fifteenth session of the Assembly, the achievement of neutrality, for which our people desperately long, might have remained no more than a pious hope. His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sihanouk deserves in this respect the gratitude of the Laotian people.