Although it retained a nominally separate identity from the Pathet Lao, Patriotic Neutralist leaders Deuane Sunnalath and Khamouane Boupha would succeed to ministerial posts in the communist-dominated Provisional Government of National Union on 9 April 1974.
Captain Kong Le would subsequently lose both the Battle of Vientiane and control of Laos in December 1960, and retreat to the Plain of Jars.
[3] Deuane had about 250 troops under his command in Military Region 2; they allied themselves with General Khamouane Boupha's force of 1,500 in far northern Phongsali Province.
[3] By the time of the 1964 coup, the Patriotic Neutralists had been largely absorbed into the Pathet Lao,[4] although the two sides held the first of its biannual cooperative mock political congresses in 1964.
On 27 April 1964, as the Royalist garrison withdrew from Phou San, it was attacked and defeated by communist forces as nearby FAN units deigned to intervene.
However, when Pathet Lao occupied the vacated strongpoint overlooking Kong Le's headquarters at Muong Phan, his Bataillon Parachutistes 5 unsuccessfully assaulted the mountaintop.
The rules of engagement followed by the American forces within the Kingdom of Laos posited a 16 kilometer wide sanctuary along the border of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to avoid inadvertent attacks on the DRV.
[8] As the communists gained power toward the end of the Laotian Civil War, the Patriotic Neutralist front was still recognized as a separate organization.