South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty, signed in Manila on September 8, 1954, included a gratuitous offer of protection for three non-member countries. In a protocol attached to the Treaty, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were designated as states to which Article Four that dealing with collective measures in the event of aggression by armed attack could apply. Action, however, under this article was only to take place at the invitation, or with the consent, of the governments named in the protocol. The three 'protocol' countries (as they became known) were not invited to membership of the treaty organization, primarily because accord between the powers at the Geneva Conference on Indo-China in 1954 rested on the neutralization of the successor states of that region.1 However, the principle of neutralization was denied from an unlikely source prior to the Manila meeting which produced SEATO. In the closing hours of the Geneva conference the Cambodian delegation demonstrated a stubborn persistence to secure concessions on this issue. The final declaration relating to Cambodia stated that: