Despite this, the Khmer Republic did not survive the 1975 dry season offensive. The communist forces had by this point surrounded the capital, whose population had been vastly increased by refugees from the fighting; Lon Nol, who was extremely superstitious, ordered that consecrated sand be spread around the city from helicopters to protect it. Though FANK was by this time fighting with extreme tenacity, and the Khmer Rouge soldiers were suffering from poor morale, malaria, and even higher rates of casualties than FANK, fresh supplies of arms and ammunition from China gave them the impetus to overrun the Republic's remaining outposts. Proposed peace negotiations repeatedly stalled as Sihanouk refused to deal with Lon Nol directly, requesting his removal as a precondition. A plan proposed by Étienne Manac'h, the French Ambassador to China, in which Sihanouk would return to Cambodia as the head of a national unity government (leading to the likely immediate defection of a large proportion of the Khmer Rouge's peasant soldiers), failed to materialise.