SEATO Graduate School of Engineering (currently the Asian Institute of Technology) in Thailand to train engineers. SEATO also sponsored the creation of the Teacher Development Center in Bangkok, as well as the Thai Military Technical Training School, which offered technical programs for supervisors and workmen. SEATO's Skilled Labor Project (SLP) created artisan training facilities, especially in Thailand, where ninety-one training workshops were established. SEATO also provided research funding and grants in agriculture and medical fields. In 1959, SEATO set up the Cholera Research Laboratory in Bangkok, later establishing a second Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka, East Pakistan. The Dhaka laboratory soon became the world's leading cholera research facility and was later renamed the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. SEATO was also interested in literature, and a SEATO Literature Award was created and given to writers from member states. Criticism and dissolution Though Secretary of State John Foster Dulles considered SEATO an essential element in U.S. foreign policy in Asia, historians have considered the Manila Pact a failure, and the pact is rarely mentioned in history books. In The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina, Sir James Cable, a diplomat and naval strategist, described SEATO as "a fig leaf for the nakedness of American policy", citing the Manila Pact as a "zoo of paper tigers". As early as the 1950s Aneurin Bevan unsuccessfully tried to block SEATO in the British Parliament, at one point interrupting a parliamentary debate between Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Leader of the Opposition Clement Attlee to excoriate them both for considering the idea. In the early 1970s, the question of dissolving the organization arose. Pakistan withdrew in 1973, after East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh on 16 December 1971. South Vietnam was defeated in war by North Vietnam and France withdrew financial support in 1975, and the SEATO council agreed to the phasing-out of the organization. After a final exercise on 20 February 1976, the organization was formally dissolved on 30 June 1977 during the Carter Administration. See also San Francisco System Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan Mutual Defense Treaty (United States–South Korea) Mutual Defense Treaty (United States–Taiwan) Mutual Defense Treaty (United States–Philippines) Thanat–Rusk Communiqué Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) Northeast Asia Treaty Organization (NEATO) Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Notes References Further reading Buszynski, Leszek. SEATO: