8D

Thurs., Dec. 14, 1972

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

# Kissinger's Future Hinges On Peace

## FROM PAGE ONE

spots as Vietnam and the Middle East.

This was the so-called linkage concept that Mr. Nixon pro-pounded at his first press con-ference as President.

"What I want to do is to see to it that we have strategic arms talks in a way and at a time that will promote . . . progress on . . . other out-standing problems," he said.

But David Landau, in "Kissinger: The Uses of Power," argues that Russia and China could not "deliver" North Viet-nam to the conference table.

One of the problems that held up a Vietnam settlement throughout the first four years of the Nixon Administration, Landau writes, was "the stub-bornness of Kissinger's refusal to accept the fact that the real-ities of the Southeast Asian war did not lend themselves to the panacea of great-power set-tlement."

A FORMER MEMBER of Kissinger's staff agrees with this, at least in part. He be-lieves Mr. Nixon and Kissinger have been forced to modify the original concept of linkage and apply it only to bilateral rela-tions between the United States and Russia.

"The SALT negotiations do not stand alone, but they are linked to other U.S.-Soviet ne-gotiations, not to Vietnam or the Middle East," he told the Post-Dispatch.

What is left, apparently, is Kissinger's skill as a negotiator, backed up by Mr. Nixon's private assessment: "I've come to the conclusion that there's no way to win the war. But we can't say that, of course.

In fact, we have to seem to say the opposite, just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage." (The quote comes from "Catch the Falling Flag: A Republican's Challenge to His Party," by Richard Whalen, a speechwriter in Mr. Nixon's 1968 campaign.)

In the grueling negotiations that have been underway since O t. 8, with some of the meetings lasting six yours without a break, Kissinger apparently has been engaged in the skillful, delicate and sometimes cynical adjustment of interests that characterized an historical figure he admires, Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria-Hungary.

THE CENTRAL ISSUE for Kissinger apparently has not changed —How to arrange things in South Vietnam so that the United States gets out without appearing to abandon the regime of President Nguyen Van Thieu.

In the background briefings that he has been giving for the last four years, and more explicitly in private meetings with smaller groups of newspapermen, Kissinger has made it clear that a Vietnam peace settlement must provide a chance for the Thieu government to survive for a decent interval.

He regards an eventual Communist takeover as highly likely, even inevitable, but first there must be that "decent interval."

Why?

Because otherwise it will appear that the United States has abandoned an ally, and that would cast doubt on the credibility of American foreign policy.

"What is involved now is confidence in American promises," he wrote in 1969, referring to the Vietnam war. "However,

fashionable it is to ridicule the terms 'credibility' or 'prestige,' they are not empty phrases. Other nations can gear their actions to ours only if they can count on our steadiness.

"IN MANY PARTS of the world —the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, even Japan — stability depens on confidence in American promises."

Some of 11111 Kissinger's critics believe that his preoccupation with credibility in U.S. foreign policy is a major blind spot that has prolonged the Vietnam war unnecessarily for four more years.

But to Kissinger, credibility is an integral requirement in an international system in which the major nations set the rules and abide by them. To do so, he argues, they must clearly understand the limits they have set and must have a reputation for keeping agreements.

Not the least of Vietnam's many ironies is that Kissinger, when he joined Mr. Nixon's staff in 1969, fervently wanted to shunt the war to the sidelines as a secondary issue that must not be allowed to distract attention from the historic importance of developing a new relationship with Russia and China.

"What we are doing now with China is so great, so historic, that the word 'Vietnam' will be only a footnote when it is written in history," he once told reporters.

The "footnote," however, has occupied more of his time and caused him more anguish and apprehension than any other issue.

It probably will determine whether he is remembered in history as the architect of a new structure of international peace — or just another might-have-been in Vietnam.

Four Dead

Upholds Ban On TVA Dam
In Environmental Dispute

Thurs., Dec. 14, 1972

7 D

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

CINCINNATI, Dec. 14 (AP) — The Sixth United States Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court injunction preventing the Tennessee Valley Authority from proceeding with construction of the Tellico Dam Project on the Little Tennessee River.

The court said TVA first must file a final environmental impact statement specified in a section of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The injunction last January

was in response to a request by four parties, including the environmental group Trout Unlimited, and the Association for the Preservation of the Little Tennessee River.

The trial court found that the plaintiffs were correct in contending that they would be harmed if the $69,000,000 Tellico project continued before filing of a final environmental impact statement.

The TVA had contended that the Tellico project, begun after

congressional approval in 1967 and already one third completed, could not come under restrictions imposed by an act passed two years after construction had begun.

The Tellico project received an initial congressional appropriation of $42,500,000 on Oct. 15, 1966.

TVA filed a draft environmental statement with the Council on Environmental Quality on June 18, 1971. But a court later characterized that statement as consisting almost entirely of unsupported conclusions.

8D

Thurs., Dec. 14, 1972

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

■ FROM PAGE ONE

This was the so-called linkage
concept that Mr. Nixon pro-
pounded at his first press con-
ference as President.

"What I want to do is to see to it that we have strategic arms talks in a way and at a time that will promote . . . progress on . . . other outstanding problems," he said.

But David Landau, in "Kissinger: The Uses of Power," argues that Russia and China could not "deliver" North Vietnam to the conference table.

One of the problems that held
up a Vietnam settlement
throughout the first four years
of the Nixon Administration,
Landau writes, was "the stub-
bornness of Kissinger's refusal
to accept the fact that the real-
ities of the Southeast Asian
war did not lend themselves to
the panacea of great-power set-
tlement."

A FORMER MEMBER of
Kissinger's staff agrees with
this, at least in part. He be-
lieves Mr. Nixon and Kissinger
have been forced to modify the
original concept of linkage and
apply it only to bilateral rela-
tions between the United States
and Russia.

"The SALT negotiations do not stand alone, but they are linked to other U.S.-Soviet negotiations, not to Vietnam or the Middle East," he told the Post-Dispatch.

What is left, apparently, is
Kissinger's skill as a negotia-
tor, backed up by Mr. Nixon's
private assessment: "I've come
to the conclusion that there's
no way to win the war. But
we can't say that, of course.

In fact, we have to seem to
say the opposite, just to keep
some degree of bargaining lev-
erage." (The quote comes from
"Catch the Falling Flag: A Re-
publican's Challenge to His
Party," by Richard Whalen, a
speechwriter in Mr. Nixon's
1968 campaign.)

In the grueling negotiations
that have been underway since
Oct. 8, with some of the meet-
ings lasting six yours without a
break, Kissinger apparently has
been engaged in the skillful,
delicate and sometimes cynical
adjustment of interests that
characterized an historical fig-
ure he admires, Prince Kle-
mens von Metternich of Aus-
tria-Hungary.

THE CENTRAL ISSUE for
Kissinger apparently has not
changed —How to arrange
things in South Vietnam so that
the United States gets out with-
out appearing to abandon the
regime of President Nguyen
Van Thieu.

In the background briefings
that he has been giving for the
last four years, and more ex-
plicitly in private meetings with
smaller groups of newspaper-
men, Kissinger has made it
clear that a Vietnam peace set-
tlement must provide a chance
for the Thieu government to
survive for a decent interval.

He regards an eventual Com-
munist takeover as highly like-
ly, even inevitable, but first
there must be that "decent in-
terval."

Why?

Because otherwise it will ap-
pear that the United States has
abandoned an ally, and that
would cast doubt on the credi-
bility of American foreign poli-
cy.

"What is involved now is con-
fidence in American promises,"
he wrote in 1969, referring to
the Vietnam war. "However,

fashionable it is to ridicule the
terms 'credibility' or 'prestige, '
they are not empty phrases.
Other nations can gear their ac-
tions to ours only if they can
count on our steadiness.

"IN MANY PARTS of the
world —the Middle East, Eu-
rope, Latin America, even Ja-
pan — stability depens on confi-
dence in American promises."

Some of 11111 Kissinger's crit-
ics believe that his preoccupa-
tion with credibility in U.S. for-
eign policy is a major blind
spot that has prolonged the
Vietnam war unnecessarily for
four more years.

Not the least of Vietnam's
many ironies is that Kissinger,
when he joined Mr. Nixon's
staff in 1969, fervently wanted
to shunt the war to the side-
lines as a secondary issue that
must not be allowed to distract
attention from the historic im-
portance of developing a new
relationship with Russia and
China.

"What we are doing now with
China is so great, so historic,
that the word 'Vietnam' will be
only a footnote when it is writ-
ten in history," he once told re-
porters.

The "footnote," however, has
occupied more of his time and
caused him more anguish and
apprehension than any other is-
sue.

Thurs., Dec. 14, 1972

7 D

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

CINCINNATI, Dec. 14 (AP).
— The Sixth United States Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals has up-
held a lower court injunction
preventing the Tennessee Val-
ley Authority from proceeding
with construction of the Tellico
Dam Project on the Little Ten-
nessee River.

The court said TVA first must
file a final environmental im-
pact statement specified in a
section of the National
Environmental Policy Act.

The injunction last January

was in response to a request by
four parties, including the envi-
ronmental group Trout Unlimit-
ed, and the Association for the
Preservation of the Little Ten-
nessee River.

The trial court found that the
plaintiffs were correct in con-
tending that they would be
harmed if the $69,000,000 Tellico
project continued before filing
of a final environmental impact
statement.

congressional approval in 1967
and already one third complet-
ed, could not come under res-
trictions imposed by an act
passed two years after con-
struction had begun.

The Tellico project received
an initial congressional appro-
priation of $42,500,000 on Oct.
15, 1966.

TVA filed a draft environ-
mental statement with the
Council on Environmental Quali-
ity on June 18, 1971. But a court
later characterized that state-
ment as consisting almost en-
tirely of unsupported conclu-
sions.

ESSAI

La leçon d'histoire
d'Henry Kissinger

Ce petit professeur de Harvard disséquant le Congrès de Vienne s'appelle Henry Kissinger. Il est passionnant d'étudier les leçons qu'a prises auprès de Metternich l'homme de Nixon.

« Le chemin de la paix », par Henry A. Kissinger (Denoël, 448 pages, 45 F).

Que n'a-t-on écrit sur Henry Kissinger ? Ses origines, sa carrière universitaire, son ralliement au président Nixon, ses voyages et ses bonnes fêtes. Et les Français peu curieux devaient jusqu'aujourd'hui se satisfaire de cette image rose bonbon : Kissinger : un homme à tout faire, serviteur jovial de Nixon qui se glisse comme une anguille entre les conti-nents, les guerres et les journalistes, pour la plus grande gloire de son mai-tre californien.

ROBEYDAVIDET

LE PRINCE DE METTERNICH
Une erreur de taille

Pourtant, une constatation d'évi-dence aurait dû mettre la puce à l'oreille de nos compatriotes. En poli-tique tout autant qu'en littérature ou dans le show business — n'est-ce pas d'ailleurs un peu la même chose ? — il n'existe pas de réussite durable sans raison. Si M. Kissinger est si habile et si important, c'est probablement qu'il a pas mal réfléchi. Désormais, nous en possédons la preuve.

Elle est écrite en toutes lettres dans le livre « A world restored » que les éditions Denoël viennent de publier en français sous le titre depuis quelques jours discutable : « Le chemin

de la paix ». Inutile d'y chercher une étude de la politique étrangère des États-Unis. Ni Nixon, ni Mao, ni Thieu ne hantent ces pages. Simplement Metternich et Castelreagh. « Dear Henry » à l'époque, c'est-à-dire aux alentours des années 1960, s'intéressait à l'Europe du Congrès de Vienne.

Qu'est-ce qui le passionnait là-dedans ? L'imbroglio diplomatique ? La chute de Napoléon ? Les personnages qui dansaient, jacassaient et conspiraient dans les palais autrichiens ? Pas exactement. Henry Kissinger n'est ni un historien ni un philosophe. Tout simplement un homme qui cherche dans l'histoire passée des lunettes pour y voir un peu plus clair dans l'histoire future.

Or, entre 1812 et 1822, il se passe en Europe un événement unique : une puissance révolutionnaire à bout de souffle s'effondre sous les coups d'une gigantesque coalition conservatrice. L'ordre pré-révolutionnaire est mort ; l'ordre post-révolutionnaire est à inventer. Bien entendu, les vainqueurs raisonnent à partir de schémas intellec-tuels archaiques. Mais ils ne peuvent ignorer les bouleversements provoqués par l'aventure française. Ils croient donc reconstituer un ancien monde, alors qu'ils en fabriquent un nouveau. Deux personnages dominent la scène : Metternich (les Français le savaient) et Castelreagh (les Français l'igno-raient). M. de Talleyrand, dont nous sommes si fiers, était moins important que nous le croyions. Tout simplement

parce qu'il représentait la puissance vaincue. Or l'Autrichien et l'Anglais vont réussir, sans trop s'en rendre compte, à trouver les formes d'un équilibre européen, c'est-à-dire, à l'époque, mondial, qui va en gros subsister jusqu'à la fin du siècle, et qui eût pu durer plus longtemps encore si Metternich n'avait pas commis une erreur, de taille : il n'avait pas prévu l'êmer-gence de la Prusse.

Lorsqu'il écrivait ces pages, le petit professeur de Harvard ne savait pas le rôle qui l'attendaif : leur lecture est d'autant plus fascinante. Fin d'une épopée révolutionnaire, recherche d'un nouvel équilibre militaire, impos-sibilité de dialogue entre le système de valeurs créé par la révolution et celui auquel se réfèrent les vain-queurs, nécessité de compromis qui permettent l'établissement d'une paix relative, brassage des idées et ab-sorption lente de l'idéologie assas-sinée par le système conservateur qui n'a qu'en apparence emporté la partie, voilà les thèmes qui fascinent M. Kissinger. On comprend d'un coup pour-quoi il est si à l'aise entre Moscou, Pékin, Saigon et Washington. Metternich le hante ; et il voudrait bien que les États-Unis ne soient pas l'Au-triche-Hongrie du XXe siècle.

Chemin faisant, le conseiller de M. Nixon se dévoile : « L'art de l'homme d'État, qui est de gouverner, possède ses servitudes : la géographie, d'une part, ainsi que les ressources disponibles. Mais il tiendra également compte de l'âme nationale, du passé historique de la nation... Sa valeur tient donc à son talent à évaluer la relation exacte des forces, puis à faire servir cette évaluation aux fins qu'il s'est assignées... Le choix entre les politiques ne procède pas des faits, mais de leur interprétation. Il appelle ce qui est essentiellement une prévi-sion, donc une démarche morale, et l'exactitude de celle-ci dépend à la fois de la définition des objectifs à attein-dre et d'une estimation des moyens disponibles. »

« Dear Henry » est donc un théori-
cien politique. Ni un fonctionnaire ni
un vaiseur. Mais la comparaison entre
le conseiller du prince et le théoricien
s'arrête là. Parce que les fonctions du
politique et du penseur sont distinctes.
Il faut en définitive plus de talents au
premier qu'au second. Et, d'autre part,
parce que les situations ne sont pas
les mêmes ; la France révolutionnaire
avait été vaincue par l'Europe ; la
Russie et la Chine n'ont été vaincues
par personne. Pour gouverner, M. Kiss-
singer ne peut que tenir compte de
ses idées d'autrefois. Il est tout de
même important qu'il en ait eu. Son
libre absorbé, on se prend à penser que
le personnage n'a pas fini de nous
étonner. ®
GEORGES SUFFERT

62

LE POINT N° 14 - 25 DÉCEMBRE 1972

EDITORIALS

NEW YORK TIMES 17 December 1972

BALTIMORE SUN 15 December 1972

## Perspective on Apollo

Project Apollo will belong to history when astronauts Cernan, Schmitt and Evans splash down in the Pacific on Tuesday. If all goes well, the most difficult and most expensive feat of exploration in history will then have come to a brilliant conclusion. The quarter-million-mile cosmic gulf between the earth and the moon has now been successfully traversed repeatedly.

The first dozen men ever to land on the moon have walked and ridden on different parts of the lunar surface, collected hundreds of pounds of rocks which have been returned to earth, planted instruments on the moon which will go on recording conditions there for years to come, and demonstrated that human beings can live and work on another planet for indefinitely long periods.

For thousands of years, men yearned to visit the moon and dismissed such thoughts as hopeless fantasy. Now what were yesterday's romantic dreams are today's humdrum facts; and generations of schoolchildren to come will learn about Neil Armstrong along with Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo.

When President Kennedy set the lunar goal before the nation, this country had not yet suffered the trauma of Vietnam. Such concepts as the welfare crisis, black power, women's lib had not yet entered the national vocabulary. In those far-off days many thought of the United States as an affluent society which had become lazy and degenerate, which had lost a sense of purpose and needed new goals to give it direction and meaning.

With what now seems like incredible naïveté, Nikita Khrushchev's boasts about defeating the United States economically and scientifically were taken seriously, while many feared that Fidel Castro would soon dominate Latin America. It was against this mixed background of exasperation and apprehension that President Kennedy sounded the call to the moon and found enormous response in Congress and among the American people.

In today's United States, cold war enthusiasm has long since been chilled by Vietnam, while the emptiness of Khrushchev's boasts has long since been understood—in Moscow as well as here. The Castro threat today is thought of in minuscule terms, while most people believe the nation's future to be more endangered by poverty, by racial and ethnic antagonisms and by other internal problems than by external tensions and threats. Standards of living, of education and of length of life are higher than ever, but expectations have exceeded achievements, producing dissatisfaction that has induced many to view the expenditures on Apollo as "waste" which could better have been used for more mundane purposes.

But there is another side to that picture. It can well be argued that in carrying forward the Apollo project, TK's country attained one of its finest hours. In a spirit of peace and selflessness, in an atmosphere of complete openness, the United States has blazed the trail to the planets and the stars. The astronauts who went to the moon were seeking knowledge, not gold or slaves or other wealth. They went there consciously as representatives of all mankind, not as imperialists seeking to bring the moon under the Stars and Stripes. What they learned has been made available to all peoples and all nations without any request for a quid pro quo.

In the atmosphere created by Project Apollo—with its constant reminder that what unites men is stronger than what divides them—it was easier to reduce cold war tensions, to end the original space race, and to begin genuine international collaboration in cosmic exploration. Project Apollo has helped consecrate the moon and space to the cause of peace and cooperation among all men. This has been a glorious adventure in whose successful outcome the people of America and of the world can properly take pride.

## Pessimistic on Vietnam

More than six weeks after Henry Kissinger said peace was "at hand," we are being told by American sources that the proper attitude toward the present situation is one neither of pessimism nor of optimism, which hardly clarifies matters, and warned by Communist spokesmen that the more accurate reading is one of pessimism. The public, possessed of a knowledge that amounts essentially to nothing, can only wonder and wait.

It does appear obvious that in late October Dr. Kissinger believed, as he said publicly, that the solid preliminaries for a peaceful settlement in Vietnam were on the brink of achievement, and that one further brief negotiating session would iron out the remaining differences, which he suggested were minor in nature. In the event, however, they would seem to have been substantive; and if the past week's flurry of activity has brought the two sides actually closer to agreement the fact is not evident on its face.

President Thieu's role in the delay, or deadlock, or impasse, or whatever it may be, is as unclear as most of the other elements are.

He was expected to object to the terms of the agreement, as published in part, and duly did so. But it was expected too that his objections, even if, more than mere pro forma, would not decisively affect the progress-of the negotiations.

Have they affected it, or haven't they? Here again, nobody knows. Among many guesses in Washington is a conjecture that President Nixon now faces the decision of whether to press President Thieu to accept the Paris package as the best that could be reasonably negotiated or to stand fully by the South Vietnamese leader, and run the risk of losing the opportunity for a settlement with Hanoi. But surely this contingency, if it exists, is one that ought to have been thought through months ago.

At any rate, Washington has now expressed rejection of the Thieu idea of a Christmas truce, a device so reminiscent of earlier "truces" at Christmas and at Tet, as inevitably to lead the public, worn out with recurrent spasms of euphoria, toward a pessimistic view of the whole matter.

CHICAGO DAILY NEWS 14 December 1972

## The last men on the moon

The exploits of the men on the moon are by now far too lengthy to list, but through them all run the common threads of versatility and ingenuity. The eleventh and twelfth men on the moon, Apollo 17's Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt, have contributed their share of these ingredients, adjusting may go there, but without the vision to unexpected problems and even building a new fender for the Rover.

They've had a lot of help from technicians back on Earth, to be sure. One of the marvels of the Apollo program is the way men and computers in Houston or the aerospace laboratories can duplicate the problems facing the astronauts and relay a prompt solution to the moon. The crew of the crippled Apollo 13 could never have made it back without such spport.

It is mainly this teamwork among men that has expanded almost beyond, belief the scope of the knowledge gained in six relatively brief stays on the moon. Robot landers such as the Russians have deployed can send back some information. They can never adapt or react the way men can do.

This is the big regret as the Apollo 17 mission closes out the manned moonflight program. Perhaps not again in this century will human eyes search the moonscape for additions to the store of knowledge about the formation of the universe. Robot machines may go there, but without the vision and the imagination that have made Apollo so successful.

Scientists will be kept busy for years analyzing all the data from the Apollo flights, and it may be that this series has already provided as much information as can be readily absorbed. A pause will not be fatal, and an easing of the costs will be welcome.

Still, an element of unearthly excitement will have gone from our lives. Never again to see those ghostly figures cavorting on the TV screen, knowing (and some still unbelieving) that this is live from the moon? Never to hear the astronauts describing the beauty of all Earthrise, or share the thrill of discovery? ("Hey! This is or-ange soil! Crazy! It really is.")

It's sad. It really is.

1-E

TIME MAGAZINE 18 Dec 1972(17)

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 16 December 1972

## Shenanigans in the Navy

Sir / Apropos the shenanigans aboard the U.S.S. Constellation [Nov. 27], no matter how overlooked by blinded authority, be-set by an inferiority complex or what have you, the actions of the men constituted mu-liny—keechaul the lot!

DODA DOUGLAS
Laguna Hills, Calif.

Sir / Admiral Zumwalt says this is not a per-missive Navy. He also publicly puts the blast on other senior admirals for not be-ing nice enough to mention it.

That rattling noise you lost heard was John Paul Jones turning over in his crypt at the Naval Academy.

D.V. GALLERY
Rear Admiral (ret.) U.S.N.
Oakton, Va.

Sir / Are we to make another General Bil-ly Mitchell of Admiral Zumwalt? The ad-mirsals who oppose him are the same as the ones who wept when Mitchell's planes dropped dummy bombs on their battle wag-ons, the same as the ones who lined up the battle wagons at Pearl Harbor to scare the Japanese. They've always been guided by rigid stupidity. I don't believe the conflict is basically racial. It was the same in World War II with no blacks. If officers treat men justly and fairly, the men will respect them and carry out orders.

MERLE MARTIN
Wooster, Ohio

Sir / Constructive progress is not without its rocks and shoals. But led by one of our country's greatest men, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, the Navy will become a profes-sional, people-oriented, proud, self-motiv-ated and self-impressed outfit in which equal opportunity is accepted as a matter of principle and human values rather than as another program dictated by statute.

JOHN A. SCOTT
Rear Admiral, U.S.N.
Dayton

## WALL STREET JRNL 18 Dec 72 (17)

THE FINAL SPACEWALK of the Apollo program was taken by Ronald Evans.

"Hey, this is great," the astronaut said as he crawled along the side of the spacecraft to retrieve three cans of film. "Two of the cani-ters contained nearly two miles of film taken by moon-mapping cameras. The third was a package of special film recording results of an experiment with a "lunar sounder." The sou-nder fired radar signals into the surface as Evans orbited the moon alone, taking X-ray-pictures of the underlying terrain. He told Mission Control the spacecraft's side was "scorched" as a result of jet thruster firings.

Evans' walk, the last big event before tomorrow's Pacific Ocean splashdown, came on the 63th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight.

# The Kremlin and Señor Allende

The other day in this space we urged Washington to be slow and careful about doing these things which might unneces-sarily alienate the Allende government in Chile and drive it into the arms of Moscow. We noted that some of Chile's economic troubles date from a long time before the present regime and are not all due to what we regard as serious mis-takes on the part of the Allende govern-ment.

Now we would like to turn to the other side of that particular problem and urge Moscow to be equally slow and cautious about taking advantage of the present economicills of Chile and of the rising suspicions in the relationship between Chile and Washington.

A great deal is at stake in the triangu-lar relationship which now exists be-tween Moscow, Washington, and the government of Chile. Here, more clearly than anywhere else, is the question whether the "cold war" really is over and whether Moscow and Washington can enter into a true "detente."

In a condition of true detente Chile would be free to go Marxist in a free election, as it has, but also be free at some subsequent election to return to a non-Marxist form of government.

Washington has entered into a novel experiment in keeping hands off while Chile has its experiment in Marxism. But that hands-off policy is based on the assumption that nothing will happen during the experiment to freeze Chile into Russia's political and military orbit. If the men in Moscow were to take advantage of Chile's present condition as it did in the case of Cuba, and draw Chile into the Warsaw Pact, and then apply the "Brezhnev doctrine" — we would be right back in the "cold war."

The Brezhnev doctrine is a one-way street. It preaches that whoever once goes Marxist must forever be Marxist. A true detente would mean that small countries living between the United States and Russia would be free to opt at any time for whichever form of social

and economic order they may at that moment prefer. They should be free to shop around.

Washington has twice allowed such shopping around within its own natural "sphere of influence," which Latin America plainly is. It tolerated Cas-troism in Cuba. The results were any-thing but reassuring. It took a mobiliza-tion of the land, sea, and air forces of the United States and full-scale preparations for an invasion of Cuba to make Moscow realize that it must not use Cuba as a strategic weapons base against the United States.

Moscow did "get the message" over Cuba. But it is most important that it remember the message. Washington can allow Chile to choose its own economic and social way of life, provided that does not mean a permanent Russian military establishment in Chile.

Someday, if detente comes and ma-tures, there will be freedom of movement for all small countries. Czechoslovakia and Poland should be as free to throw off Marxism as Chile is now to accept it. We have no doubt that Poles and Czechs would do so, instantly, were they free to make the choice.

But Washington cannot accept a situ-ation in which freedom exists only to go Marxist. Freedom must be a two-way street.

Moscow claims to want a detente with the West. It is pushing for a new and easier relationship with the United States and with Western Europe. Such an improved relationship is certainly desir-able, if it is to be fair, and fairly balanced. But it will work and can come into being, only if and when the Russians can give as much as they expect — and recognize that other people have a right to other beliefs.

Chile is an immediate test of whether Moscow thinks it can have a hunting license in the Americas while clinging possessively to Eastern Europe. We urge Moscow to be careful to avoid spoiling detente by foolish behavior toward Chile.

## NEW YORK TIMES 17 December 1972

# Bolstering Allied Unity

Two developments at the recent meeting of NATO foreign and defense ministers in Brussels deserved more attention than they received in this country. In a letter to the gathering, President Nixon promised that the United States would keep its 300,000 troops in Europe if the other allies maintained and improved their forces. And the ten nations making up the "Eurogroup" within NATO promised to increase their defense budgets by $1.5 billion over-all for 1973.

It was the third straight year that the "Eurogroup," acutely aware of the charges on Capitol Hill that the European allies are not carrying their fair share of the common defense burden, had announced substantial boosts in military spending. The latest increase will push the aggregate defense budgets of the ten above $23 bil-lion, an increase of 6.8 per cent over 1972.

By cooperating with each other for the development and procurement of new weapons, the ten governments may lay a basis for future defense integration inside an enlarged European Community. The immediate aim of

the ten when they organized in 1968, however, was to head off a unilateral reduction of American forces in Europe by demonstrating their willingness to improve their own contributions to NATO. President Nixon's re-assurance constituted a recognition of their efforts as well as a warning that they should persist.

There is nothing sacred about the American force level of 300,000. In fact, it represents substantial but gradual cuts over a period of several years. But allied morale and unity would take a hard knock and the chances of making progress on mutual and balanced East-West force reductions in Europe might be severely damaged if the United States appeared determined to pull out no matter what happened.

The NATO allies are among 34 nations already par-ticipating in preliminary talks in Helsinki to prepare a European Conference on Security and Cooperation for next summer. Preparatory talks will begin in Geneva late in January for a more limited—and much more dif-ficult—negotiation with the Soviet Union and its partners on the question of mutual and balanced force reductions. Prospects for both negotiations have been enhanced by the display of allied unity in Brussels.

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FEATURES COLUMNS

WASHINGTON POST
17 DECEMBER 1972

Discord
Still Exists
On Basics

By Murrey Marder

The United States and
North Vietnam are locked in
a "fundamental" impasse
over whether they are nego-
tiating an "armistice" or
"peace," Henry A. Kissinger
ruefully acknowledged yes-
terday.

None of the hopeful, coun-
terbalancing statements by
the weary presidential en-
voy at his second extraordi-
nary press conference in
seven weeks could overcome
the basic discord that he re-
vealed.

"We have an agreement that is 99 per cent completed as far as the text of the agreement is concerned" and "we are one decision away from a settlement," said the upbeat Kissinger. The downbeat Kissinger, however, admitted, "But that alone is not the problem," because "the technical implementing instruments that they (North Vietnam) have presented" to bring the agreement into force "are totally unacceptable..."

The barrier on which the
negotiations have found-
ered, Kissinger indirectly
acknowledged, is in fact the
central issue in the war:
whether there is one Viet-
nam or two.

Kissinger virtually con-
ceded that when he said,
"We wanted some reference
in the agreement, somehow,
however illusive, however
indirect, which would make
clear that the two parts of
Vietnam would live in peace
with each other and that
neither side would impose
its solution on the other by
force."

The President's national
security adviser, speaking in
circuitous language because
of his agreement with North
Vietnam's Le Duc Tho not
to discuss "the substance of
the talks," said at another
point, "We cannot accept
the proposition that North
Vietnam has a right of con-
stant intervention in the
south."

What Kissinger evidently
was referring to there was
what North Vietnam's posi-
tion would be if the "peace
settlement" is breached by
South Vietnam.

Kissinger did not say
what the American position
would be if the agreement is
breached on the Communist
side, although President

Nixon reportedly has given
assurances to the Saigon
government that American
air power could support the
agreement.

On Oct. 26 at the White

NEW YORK TIMES

17 DECEMBER 1972

The Peace Dilemma

By Tom Wicker

Dr. Kissinger is home from Paris,
but peace seems no more at hand than
it ever was. Every report suggests,
instead, that President Nixon is con-
fronted with a three-pronged dilemma:

He can sign a separate agreement
with Hanoi but without Saigon; it
would be essentially the agreement
detailed by Dr. Kissinger on Oct. 26.

He can find some means of pressur-
ing President Thieu into signing that
agreement.

Or he can abandon the agreement
of Oct. 26.

Either of the first two choices would
be more difficult for Mr. Nixon to take
than may be commonly believed, and
the difficulty is largely of his own
making. It is that he has fought for
four years a war of terrible cost in
lives, dollars and national unity solely
in order that the Thieu regime might
have what he calls "a chance" to
survive and thus avoid the blood bath
of 500,000 or more executions that
Mr. Nixon has repeatedly predicted.

The American people also have been
told time and again that if they aban-
don an ally without making sure it
had at least that "chance" to survive,
they would be inviting opponents else-
where to believe in American weakness
and lack of purpose, thereby endanger-
ing the possibility of a "generation
of peace."

So it will not now be easy for Mr.
Nixon to announce that he will sign
a separate agreement with Hanoi,
when Saigon is trumpeting to the
world that that agreement does not
give it a chance to survive—since it
would leave the North Vietnamese
Army in South Vietnam, and admit
both the Vietcong and non-Communist,
but anti-Thieu, elements to some
degree of political power in Saigon.
Nor will it be easy for Mr. Nixon to
force Saigon to accept the agreement
unless he at least threatens such a
separate agreement with Hanoi.

Signing a separate agreement with Hanoi, however, would be much the same thing as the unilateral withdrawal from the war that Mr. Nixon has resisted for four years of death and destruction. The Saigon regime, the greatest political strength of which has been the South Vietnamese people's belief that the United States would not let it be overthrown, could not long survive even the threat, much less the fact of such a withdrawal.

Of course, it would be harder still
for Mr. Nixon to back away from the
Oct. 26 agreement, now that peace has
been proclaimed at hand; and if he did
there is no certainty that the Demo-
cratic Congress would continue to fi-
nance the war. But an American

spokesman in Paris suggested last
week the possibility that a breakdown
of negotiations might yet be blamed
on Hanoi; the Communist side, he said,
was like "the high pressure salesman
who tries to obtain immediate signa-
ture of an incomplete contract."

The effrontery of this approach is
astonishing. On Oct. 26 Dr. Kissinger
himself said that "what remains to be
done is the smallest part of what has
already been accomplished" and
stressed that nothing remained but
technical and drafting details. It seems
reasonably clear that the United States,
on behalf of South Vietnam, has re-
opened substantive questions that Dr.
Kissinger described as settled on Oct.
26.

He said then: "The principal provi-
sions were and are that a cease-fire
would be observed in South Vietnam
at a time to be mutually agreed upon.
It would be a cease-fire in place." But
it has developed that the negotiations
are stuck on Saigon's insistence on
either North Vietnamese withdrawal
or concurrence in a declaration that
the Saigon Government is sovereign
throughout South Vietnam. Either way,
the agreed-upon "cease-fire in place"
would be negated.

Saigon also is said to be seeking
modification of the so-called national
council of reconciliation agreed to by
Dr. Kissinger; it wants the non-Com-
munist "third force" left out. But
which force controls what territory in
South Vietnam, and who is to have
power—either all or a share of it —
in Saigon are, and always have been,
the major issues of the war. Even that
same American spokesman conceded
that the recent round of negotiations
concentrated on "issues of central im-
portance." Dr. Kissinger said on Oct.
26 that such issues had been settled—
"and we give the assurance that we
will stick by what we have negotiated
and what we have achieved so labori-
ously."

He said then, too, that agreement
had become possible, when it had not
been in the preceding four years, be-
cause Hanoi has finally accepted the
principle that the military issues should
be settled first and that then "the two
South Vietnamese parties shall settle
together the internal matters of South
Vietnam."

But everything so far learned about
the negotiations since Oct. 26, and
after Mr. Nixon's landslide re-election
just twelve days later, suggest that if
Hanoi has accepted that principle,
Richard M. Nixon has not yet finally
done so. He is still trying to arrange
"the internal matters of South Viet-
nam" to Saigon's liking and his own
political needs.

House, when Kissinger
glowingly of moving "from
hostility" to "normalcy."
Nixon, half of President
"We believe peace is at
"dropped" or cut back vari-
ous demands that would
be buoyantly proclaimed on be-
hand," Kissinger spoke

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CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

NEW YORK TIMES

18 DECEMBER 1972(17)

So It Goes

By Anthony Lewis

LONDON, Dec. 17.—The spread of cynicism in the United States, the loss of faith in the political process, can be traced back in significant part to the election of 1964. A good many people felt afterward, whether or not they articulated the thought, that they had been the victims of a deception. Lyndon Johnson had run as the peace candidate, won in a landslide and then quickly slipped the country into war.

One bitter result of Henry Kissinger's
confession that peace is not, after all,
at hand in Vietnam is likely to be an
intensification of the feeling that there
is no truth in the system. For the pub-
lic is wise enough to look past the
evasions and the feeble attempts at
justification and realize that, for what-
ever reason, it has once again been
grossly deceived.

"It is obvious," Kissinger said on
Oct. 26, "that a war that has been
raging for ten years is drawing to a
conclusion. . . . It is obvious that most
of the difficult problems have been
dealt with. . . . Having come this far,
we cannot fail and we will not
fail. . . ."

Kissinger is a smart and careful
man. One cannot imagine him using
such language lightly—language with
the definitive, even proud ring of the
word "obvious." He knows far too
much about the history of Vietnam to
have based such flat statements on
mere wishful thinking. He must have
believed, as he said, that peace was
"within reach in a matter of weeks
or less."

What, then, went wrong?

According to Kissinger, in his latest White House press conference, it was the other side that made difficulties. Le Duc Tho kept trying to reopen settled questions of principle. There were now important disagreements about the size and powers of the proposed international truce supervision team, and about language reflecting Saigon's claim to sovereignty over all of South Vietnam.

Of course Hanoi may have been
difficult when the talks resumed after
the American election; the whole his-
tory of negotiations on Vietnam
makes a straightforward path to peace
unlikely. But Kissinger's claim that it
was all the other side's fault is
pathetically unconvincing.

Consider the two issues that he
now suggests are the sticking points.
The first, that of the truce supervision
team, Kissinger treated lightly, indeed
iocularly, at his press conference of
Oct. 26. He quipped that this section
of the draft agreement would "no
doubt occupy graduate students for
many years" and that "only my col-
league," Ambassador William H.
Sullivan, really understood it.

As for the Saigon Government's
claim to be the sole legal sovereign
for all South Vietnam, the basic ap-
proach of the draft agreement negated
that. For it was an agreement on a
standstill cease-fire, with the two
warring parties in the South contin-
ing to control their own areas and
committed to work toward an even-
tual political settlement.

Moreover, the draft agreement ex-
plicitly ruled out treating South Viet-
nam as a juridically independent

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 16 DECEMBER 1972

Public now backing Nixon
on Vietnam compromise

President Nixon has no plans at this time to
make an announcement on Vietnam before
Christmas, the White House says.

By Courtney R. Sheldon

Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor.

Washington

President Nixon's current peace package
- as the American public now understands it
- apparently has wide support.

The public went along with the heavy
bombing of North Vietnam last spring. Now
every opinion sampling shows it is ready for a
"compromise" even if it leads to the downfall
of President Thieu of South Vietnam.

This strengthening of President Nixon's
hand is welcome news at the White House,
though President Nixon's decisions on the
Vietnam war have not always been tailored
to public opinion.

Who will be in control?

When the Harris poll scientifically polled a
segment of Americans on their guess as to
who will be in control of South Vietnam five
years from now, the reply was:

Communists, 33 percent; coalition with
Communists, 33 percent; present Thieu gov-
ernment, 9 percent; neutralists, 7 percent;
and not sure, 18 percent.

In the same poll, taken on Nov. 21 and 22
and just now released, 65 percent regarded
the terms of the agreement as they have
been reported as "a fair compromise."

Though President Thieu has gradually
escalated his complaints on the terms of the
agreement, they do not seem to have had an
impact on American public opinion.

The only evidence that there is a body of
sentiment in America close to that of Mr.
Thieu is that 13 percent of the public feel the
impending agreement would actually be a
victory for North Vietnam. But there was no
breakdown of even this figure to tell how
many of this 13 percent thought this dis-
astrous.

Only 5 percent see the proposed peace
terms as a victory for the U.S. and 17 percent
are not sure what it all means.

The net of all this is that the majority of the
public does not seriously fault Mr. Nixon on
the manner in which he is getting out of
Vietnam. The November election had al-
ready said this in general terms.

And further, it does not foretell a finger-
pointing uprising against the Nixon adminis-
tration should the whole deal go sour within
several years.

(Meanwhile, chief Hanoi negotiator Le Duc
Tho was smiling and relaxed as he left Paris
for Hanoi via Moscow and Peking following
the latest round of talks, staff correspondent
Takashi Oka reports from Paris. "I am
always very optimistic," he said at the
airport, asked if he thought Vietnam might be
able to celebrate Christmas in peace.)

President Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger,
his chief Vietnam peace negotiator, have
several times expressed concern over public
disillusionment in postwar years if it ap-
peared the U.S. had lost the war — and its

country. The very first paragraph of
the summary published by Hanoi Oct.
26, which Kissinger acknowledged as
"a very fair account," said the United
States would respect "the independ-
ence, sovereignty, unity and territorial
integrity of Vietnam as recognized by

world leadership role, too.

There is, the Harris people find, an ex-
pectation by the public that any cease-fire
and peace arrangement would be violated by
both Hanoi and Saigon.

Thirty-nine percent said the Communists
"will violate in major way." Thirty-six
percent expect Saigon will do the same.

Added to the 39 percent are another 33
percent who feel the Communists will at least
"violate in minor way."

The present state of public opinion, as it
focuses on the Thieu government, is similar
to that expressed in polls over a period of
years.

In January, 1971, a Gallup poll reported
that 73 percent of the public favored the
Hatfield-McGovern proposal to require the
U.S. to bring all U.S. troops home before the
end of 1971.

This sentiment subsided as President
Nixon continued for the next two years to
remove large blocks of U.S. soldiers from
South Vietnam.

During the period of disenchantment in
early 1971 and the days after the Laos
Incursion in February George Gallup found
that 69 percent thought President Nixon was
not telling the public all he should about the
Vietnam war. Forty-six percent disapproved
of the way Mr. Nixon was handling the war.

The public had made almost the same
estimate of President Johnson and his admin-
istration two years before.

At the end of February, in a Gallup poll, the
public registered 42 to 39 percent disapproval
of Mr. Nixon's specific decision to send troops
into Laos.

The antiair feeling was still deep in June,
1971, when Mr. Gallup said 61 percent had
concluded it was a mistake for the U.S. to
have become involved in Vietnam in the first
instance.

The Harris poll in October, 1971, said 65
percent were convinced it was morally wrong
for the U.S. to be fighting in Vietnam.

At almost that same time, the public was
beginning a dramatic shift in its overall
attitude toward Mr. Nixon. A Harris survey
in September, 1971, showed a significant rise
in Mr. Nixon's popularity. It continued with
only minor adjustments all the way to the
1972 election.

Its real start is traceable to the President's
announcement in August, 1971, of price and
wage controls. There also was intensified
goodwill toward Mr. Nixon after the Moscow
and Peking summits in early 1972. The drop
in U.S. casualties in South Vietnam continued
steady during the last half of Mr. Nixon's first
term.

As late as August, 1972, however, the
Harris polls recorded a 65 percent negative
vote against Mr. Nixon's negotiating style on
a Vietnam settlement.

The Oct. 26 declaration that "peace is at
hand" by Dr. Kissinger reverse this. But
the latest Harris poll indicates that the public
retains its deep-seated disillusionment on the
basic U.S. involvement in IndoChina.

the 1954 Geneva agreements" (em-
phasis added).

In other words, the draft terms
continued the Geneva formula of re-
garding Vietnam as one country,
divided by a temporary military line.

(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

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BALTIMORE SUN 17 DECEMBER 1972

Thorny problems loom for Vietnam cease-fire

By ARNOLD R. ISAACS

Sun Staff Correspondent

Saigon—Even before Henry Kissinger's disclosure yesterday of snags at the Paris peace talks, it was apparent that the practical difficulties of policing a Vietnam cease-fire would be immense.

The prevailing attitude among American and South Vietnamese officials was summed up by a senior American diplomat, who told a visitor recently: "It will be like nothing that has ever happened before in the history of warfare.

"I could spin out all sorts of theories for you, but the truth is I don't have the faintest idea what this place will be like after a cease-fire — and I don't think anyone else does, either," he said.

In recent weeks, interviews with officials in Saigon and in the countryside produced a virtual consensus that no mechanical procedures written into a peace pact can themselves assure that cease-fire will be effective. Only goodwill on both sides — a rare commodity in Vietnam after a generation of war— can do that.

Although Dr. Kissinger described the composition and powers of the international supervisory force as the crucial issue on which the talks foundered, many officials in Vietnam believe even a force of several thousand men, as proposed by the United States, would not be effective in guaranteeing a cease-fire.

"Hundreds of thousands of International Control Commission personnel cannot do anything," says a South Vietnamese province chief. "They will not be able to tell the North Vietnamese Communists from the Southerners. It is even difficult for us as Vietnamese to do so. When there is a cease-fire the Communists will try to mix with the people and there is no telling them apart."

The old International Control Commission, with Canada, Poland and India as members, proved unable to guarantee the withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces from Laos in 1962 or to police the Vietnam accords of 1974.

Some observers question the size of the proposed peace force. "If the idea is to keep soldiers from the peace-keeping force standing between all the hostile

units," says a diplomat who has been involved intimately with the futile efforts of the old commission. "you couldn't do that with 50,000 men. If the idea is a symbolic presence, then 500 will do just as well. It's the most absurd thing I've ever heard of."

In a war in which the two opposing armies do not face each other across a recognized front line but are interspersed throughout the country, it is difficult to imagine a control force that actually will be able to be on the scene to prevent—or even report on—possible violations.

Beyond the problem of a supervisory force, a host of other questions about the nature of a possible cease-fire have so far not been answered, although presumably they were discussed at the "technical level" meetings in Paris. They include:

Who will govern the controlled areas?

According to the computerized hamlet evaluation system set up by the U.S., but now based largely on information from Vietnamese government officials, about 1,000 hamlets, out of a total of more than 12,000, are rated as controlled by the Communists. Of the rest, although exact figures are classified, somewhat more than half are listed as securely under government control. This leaves several thousand still classed as controlled.

That rating encompasses a wide variety of situations. It may mean only that Viet Cong propaganda or tax collection teams occasionally enter the hamlet. But it also may mean that government officials enter the hamlet only during daylight and only with a military escort, returning to more secure positions at night and leaving the Viet Cong a free rein, in such hamlets the Viet Cong customarily has a parallel administration, with its own hamlet civilian and military chiefs.

Frequently, even under a cease-fire arrangement leaving each side in control of the territory it occupies, President Nguyen Van Thieu would seek to assert control of as many of the contested hamlets as possible. This, however, might raise the danger of renewed armed clashes, if the Communists

decided they were strong enough to oppose the government's claim.

Nobody really knows how accurate the security ratings are, either. Though most Americans say for the record they believe the Vietnamese reporting on hamlet conditions is not overoptimistic, some, like an American adviser in a district near Saigon, privately feel local officials report what their superiors want to hear. "At least half the A and B (severe) hamlets in this district ought to be [Contested]," this adviser said.

There is no doubt that government officials are able to retain a presence in some hamlets through accommodation with local Communist forces, and one American analyst estimates that as much as one-fifth of the population classed as government-controlled will slip swiftly under Viet Cong administration if a cease-fire is declared.

Will there be freedom of movement between government-controlled and Communist-controlled areas?

Both the government and the Communists hold areas that are enclaves, surrounded by hostile forces. Some are of major importance. The provincial capital of An Lao, 20 miles north of Saigon on Highway 13, has been cut off since early April, and government troops holding the town have been supplied by air. Similarly, the government's control of Highway 1, the principal route to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, stops well short of the border.

If a cease-fire were to be declared with the Communists still dominating stretches of these strategic highways, it seems unlikely they would permit government troops or supplies to move through their territory—and it is inconceivable the government would tolerate Communist movements through government controlled areas between the border sanctuaries and populated zones.

What will happen to the refugees?

Of about 750,000 refugees in camps in South Vietnam—not in mouth hundreds of thousands of others who somehow are supporting themselves—probably more than half come

from areas held by the Communists.

Their future is likely to become a major postwar headache. It is a virtual certainty that the government will do everything in its power to keep anyone from returning to Communist held territory, and it is equally certain the Communists will make a major political and propaganda effort with the refugees.

Officially, Americans are fond of saying that the refugees have "voted with their feet" to live under government control. But it is likely that many fled their homes not out of political conviction but simply to get out of the way of the fighting or to escape the American bombing that usually follows Communist occupation of a village.

"There are very few Vietnamese," admits a refugee relief official, "who do not want to return to the homes of their ancestors." This official expects the refugee issue to be perhaps the most serious of all following a cease-fire.

What will happen along South Vietnam's borders?

The draft nine-point agreement disclosed in October contains a loose commitment that foreign forces will be withdrawn from Laos and Cambodia — but there is no enforcement provision in the published summary of the draft, and experienced observers in both countries say it is inconceivable the North Vietnamese will give up border areas they have controlled virtually without interruption since the early years of the war.

The key areas are the Lao Communist base areas in northern Laos, which the Pathet Lao has governed since 1954: the Ho Chi Minh trail corridor in eastern Laos, along which the bulk of North Vietnamese troops and supplies travels to the battlefields in the South, the "sanctuary" regions of Cambodia along the South Vietnamese border which have been used by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops as bases for supply, staging operations and refitting of military units.

South Vietnam would like a guarantee against possible hostile use of these areas — but this desire seems highly unrealistic.

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Charles W. Yost

BALTIMORE SUN 16 DECEMBER 1972

# Security talks could be first step in loosening the Iron Curtain

Having attended this month two private meetings with Soviet and Polish officials and citizens, in which European security was one of the main topics of discussion, I have the strong impression that the Warsaw Pact governments genuinely want the conference on this subject next year to mark a significant new departure for that divided continent.

This does not suggest by any means that the East European countries are to be allowed to go their own way without supervision from big brother in Moscow, or that the armies in the center of Europe are to be dissolved. But it could mean that a continuing process of adjustment, accommodation and collaboration between East and West in Europe will commence and will gradually intensify.

The United States and the West Europeans have been concerned that the proposed conference was primarily intended to confirm the status quo in Central Europe, and that otherwise it would be largely an exercise in rhetoric and propaganda.

There was concern that it would not deal with military force reduction by both sides but might create a climate conducive to one-sided reductions by the West. There was concern also that it might open up new channels of trade of major interest to the East, but not a freer flow of people and information back and forth under the Iron Curtain.

Anxiety on several of these counts has been relieved. The German treaties resulting from Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ospitolkopf have already confirmed the status quo in Central Europe, and East Germany will soon be a member of the United Nations having diplomatic relations with the Western powers.

Agreement has been reached that preliminary negotiations concerning "reciprocal" force reductions will open in January. During his recent visit to Budapest, the Soviet party secretary, Leonid I. Brezhnev, reiterated publicly that military forces in Central Europe should be diminished. The U.S. Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, has just repeated to NATO ministers in Brussels that, provided their governments also stand fast, the U.S. will not reduce its forces in Europe except in "mutual balanced" arrangements with the other side.

The security conference therefore will take place, probably the middle of next year, under relatively favorable auspices. The Russians have at the preliminary talks in Helsinki proposed a three-point agenda: (1) "security guarantees," (2) expansion of trade and technological exchanges, and (3) establishment of some permanent machinery to monitor the implementation of conference decisions.

The first of these points presumably means another of the sweeping declarations for virtue and against sin of which the Russians are so fond and which recommit the signatories to such principles as non-use of force, respect for national sovereignty, non-intervention, support for the United Nations, etc.

No doubt some such declaration will emerge from the conference. One Western concern, shared less publicly by most of the non-Soviet Easterners, will be to see to it that the declaration is so worded as to apply to intervention in "states of the same social system," that is, to contradict the "Brezhnev Doctrine."

Both sides will be interested in trade and technological exchanges, though in varying forms and with varying emphasis. Much more sticky will be the West's desire to loosen up the flow of information from West to East and of people from East to West.

The Russians are not about to relax in any essential respect their bear hug on Eastern Europe, and it seems unlikely that more than the most meager progress will be registered in these areas.

In many ways the most interesting proposed agenda item is the last one—permanent machinery. It seems likely that some on both Eastern and Western sides are thinking in terms of a series of conferences extending over a number of years, gradually recreating some semblance of a homogeneous European society analogous to that which exited before World War I.

No doubt the Russians at present think much more in terms of "peaceful coexistence" than of any homogenization or even convergence. Indeed they may see this conference system as a means of controlling from Moscow a process which on their side might otherwise get out of hand. They are unlikely to agree to force reductions involving withdrawal of their divisions from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary unless they are sure the process of detente and collaboration is under control.

Nothing could contribute more over the long run to the goals which they have so long been seeking—security and symbiosis in Europe—than the creation, use and development of multilateral institutions and the United States and Canada.

WASHINGTON POST 16 DECEMBER 1972

Tom Braden

# Removing Helms From the CIA Had to Be a 'Personal' Decision

THIS CITY'S BEST wisecracker proposed last summer to Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin that he make himself available as a replacement for Sen. Thomas Eagleton on the Democratic ticket. "Mr. Dobrynin," he said in mock seriousness, "you would not be fooled by briefings from the Defense Department about the strength of U.S. weapons. You would know."

I would not argue—even in the same vein—that Richard Helms, whom Mr. Nixon recently deposed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, knows more about Soviet weapons than leaders in the Kremlin. But it is a demonstrable fact that he knows more about them than the Defense Department. Helms was right, a couple of years ago, when the question of whether or not to build an ABM system was being argued in the Senate—and Melvin Laird, and his research chief, John Foster, were wrong.

Laird told the President that the Soviets were going for a first-strike capability with the development of the huge SS-9s. He predicted they would build them at the rate of 50 or 60 a year. By 1974, he suggested, the Soviet Union, possessed of 500 SS-9s, would be ready to call the tune.

IT WAS A FRIGHTENING prediction but it happened—perhaps by coincidence—to come at the time when President Nixon was trying to convince the U.S. Senate to embark upon an ABM system. Laird's predictions fited neatly with the arguments Mr. Nixon's men were making on Capitol Hill. No doubt, the President was pleased to have them.

In this context, the word from Helms cannot have been pleasing. Helms said the Soviet Union was not going for a first strike; it would not build SS-9s at the rate of 50 or 60 per year; it would not reach the level of 500.

As it turned out, Helms was right and Laird and Foster were wrong. The Soviet Union built 34 more SS-9s and then stopped at 318; the balance of terror preserves the peace; nothing suggests that it can be disrupted by 1974.

I HAVE SINCE thought that Helms

displayed courage in sticking to his view in the face of formidable opposition and his superior's obvious prediction for it. So I was disturbed when I learned Helms was to be dismissed as

> "... he knows more about Soviet weapons than the Defense Department does."

chief of CIA and more disturbed when I consider the possible reasons for his dismissal.

Perhaps an admission for the record should be entered at this point: I served for some years as an associate of Helms' in the agency. I learned to respect his quiet pragmatism, to admire his ability and his human decency and to stand in absolute awe of his uncanny ability to avoid having anything to do with those programs of the era which in retrospect should clearly have been handled by the army, the navy or Ringling Brothers Circus.

Nevertheless, I find myself hoping that Mr. Nixon doesn't like Helms at all. For it is easier to live with this thought than with the suspicion that Mr. Nixon doesn't like the intelligence which Helms has been giving him. Consider, for example, the following:

* That thousands of North Vietnamese agents hold jobs in the South Vietnamese government.

* That the Cambodian invasion will not halt infiltration.

* That the enemy headquarters or COSVN is not where the Department of Defense thinks it is.

* That the South Vietnamese army will not perform well in Laos.

* That the bombing will not cause North Vietnam to sue for peace.

* That mining Haiphong Harbor will not cut off supplies.

These cannot have been welcome views at the White House. But the important thing is that they were accurate views. So I hope the decision to disarm Helms has not been ideological: The CIA is one of the places in government which ought not to be asked to come up with something better.

© 1972, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON POST

18 DEC 1972 (17)

## Vietnam Taxes

SAIGON — President Thieun signed a new decree raising taxes on personal and business incomes by as much as 300 per cent, the Vietnam Press Agency announced.

The new taxes are graduated in six steps from 10 per cent on $600 incomes to 70 per cent on $48,000 incomes and will apply to all regardless of nationality.

9-F

Henry A. Kissinger, de mascotte van de diplomatie

Wie vandaag diplomatie zegt, zegt Henry A. Kissinger. En wie Kissinger zegt, zegt diplomatie. Maar kan je het een via het andere verklaren ? De mythe Kissinger en de fascinatie voor diplomatie zetten niet aan tot veel kritische vragen, ze hebben genoeg aan zichzelf, maar breek je de magische cirkel, wat is dan diplomatie en wie is dan Kissinger ?

Kissinger, de Duits-Joodse Harvard-student en -professor, die tien jaar was toen de Weimar-republiek verdween en hij met zijn ouders naar Amerika uitweek. Kissinger de bewonderaar van Metternich en Bismarck. Over de eersie schreef hij een boek, zijn beste en meest betekenisvolle zegt Stone, „A World Restored” van ’64. Over Bismarck publiceerde hij in ’68 een „briljant” (zegt nogmaals Stone) essay. Kissinger de playboy, de „swinger”, dear Henry’ zoals Danielie Hunebelle haar boek over de amoureuze en intieme Kissinger noemde. Kissinger de persoonlijke adviseur van Nixon voor nationale veiligheid, de gangmaker van de reizen naar Peking en Moskou, de onderhandelaar met Hanoi en straks misschien met Israël en de Arabische landen. Kissinger de intellektueel met bril en aktentas die een heel staatsdepartement op eigen schouders draagt.

Diplomatie, die occultste van alle vormen van politiek. Een kunst uit een vroegerc eeuw, toen galanterie en intellegentie, toen directe, persoonlijke contacten onder

mensen van dezelfde stand en klasse de gang van zaken in de wereld onder vier ogen konden bedisselen. Diplomatie, om echt diplomatie te zijn, hoort geheim te zijn. Kissinger herstelde die kwaliteit. Als in een espionage-verhaal verdween hij in Pakistan voor enkele dagen uit de roulatie om plots weer op te duiken met de verbazingwekkende verklaring: „Ik ben naar Peking geweest en heb er Tsjoe en Lai ontmoet”. Ook om in Parijs met Le Doek Tho te gaan praten verdwijnt hij regelmatig ,om uit te rusten”.

Henry KISSINGER

Geheime diplomatie heeft het voordeel dat je ze knap kunt ensceneren als even zovele coups de théâtre. Het heeft het voordeel dat je ongestoord je gang kunt gaan en niet bij elke stap verantwoording heeft af te leggen, noch aan het Congres, noch aan de diensten van het Staatsdepartement. Trouwens de Pentagon Papers bewezen dat in een bureaucratische structuur geheimhouding nooit honderd procent kan gegarandeerd worden. Kissingers mini-staatsdepartement is (bijna zeker) waterdicht.

Geheime diplomatie heeft de charmes en de persoonlijke opwinding van een schaakspel, waar je verschillende zetten kunt plannen, waar je omwegen en valstrikken kunt opzetten die in de openbaarheid nooit zouden kunnen ge maakt worden. De Vietnam-onderhandel- gen sinds hun doorbraak naar een definitieve oplossing op 8 oktober liken op een moeilijk te ontcijferen partij schaak, met schijnbewegingen, obstructie en zelts psychische ondermijning van tegenstan- ders à la Fischer.

Afgezien van het plezier van het spel, wat ligt aan de basis van zo’n man als Kissinger ? Wat zijn b.v. zijn intellectuele en politieke antecedenten ? Het ligt immers helemaal niet voor de hand dat deze jood zou gaan samenwerken met een orthodoxe WASP als Nixon, dat deze intellectueel schoep zou gaan met een Nixon die allergisch is voor intellectuelen, dat deze man die als kind op de vlucht

26

THE WASHINGTON POST, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17,

Joseph Kraft

After Vietnam:
Less Room
For Big Deals

"The string is running out on the kind of thing Mr. Nixon, working with Henry Kissinger, negotiated with Chou . . . Brezhnev and Le Duc Tho . . ."

of these offers, American officials as-
sert, were previously cleared with
President Thieu. They also say that,
even if Saigon's present demands were
added to the agreement, there would
be no way of enforcing them. It ap-
pears to the American negotiators,
therefore, that President Thieu is act-
ing to scuttle the agreement worked
out so painfully between Washington
and Hanoi.

I have no doubt that the complaints
lodged against President Thieu are
well-founded: He has always been a
tough customer, and in the past he has
had his way when he stuck to his guns.
Great pressure will probably have to
be brought to get him to go along with
the agreement. For my own part, I
have no doubt that such pressure
should be applied—and the sooner the
better.

But the hassle with Thieu has a

wider significance. The fact is that the
peace agreement was negotiated in a
very special way. The accord was
reached at the highest levels, in secret
talks that moved, at the end at least,
far more rapidly than anybody in-
volved believed possible.

President Thieu is not a leader in
good position to go along automati-
cally with a decision of that kind. His
regime may not offer the world's lead-
ing example of government by con-
sent, but he still has to clear decisions
with an administration in Saigon and
with the generals commanding the re-
gional forces that control South Viet-
nam administratively. Given the way
the agreement was concluded, it was
inevitable, even if illogical, that Thieu
would put up significant resistance.

THE POINT of all this is that Wash-
ington has probably now gone about as
far as it can with the style of diplo-

macy that characterized President Nix-
on's first term. Increasingly less room
remains for big deals done secretly
and swiftly at the highest levels by
leaders who can deliver their coun-
tries. The string is running out on the
kind of thing Mr. Nixon, working with
Henry Kissinger, negotiated with Chou
En-lai and Leonid Brezhnev and Le
Duc Tho of North Vietnam.

Once the Vietnam situation is set-
tled, the most important international
business will involve leaders who can't
deliver in the fashion of the Commu-
nist bosses. It will center on dealings
with the west Europeans and the Japa-
nese—dealings which will require a
different pace and style. Thus, it is
now more than pious sentimentality to
talk about institutionalizing the role
played up to now, with such individual
virtuosity, by Dr. Kissinger.

PARIS—The hangup in the Vietnam peace talks here, which Henry Kissinger, has now publicly acknowledged, underlines a curious deficiency in the present management of American foreign policy. Washington can negotiate effectively with dictatorial regimes— notably in Russia, China and North Vietnam, but serious problems crop up in negotiations with leaders who must refer their decisions to a broader public. That category includes the leaders of Japan and Western Europe, of course. It also includes—like him for not, President Nguyen Van Thieu.

The present difficulty in the Paris
talks is easy to identify. Washington
and Hanoi have negotiated an agree-
ment which compromises the sover-
eignty of South Vietnam and its local
allies: No provision in the agreement
requires full withdrawal of North Viet-
namese troops from South Vietnam;
no reliable provision is made for with-
d withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops
from Cambodia and Laos.

Saigon has dug in hard against these
features of the agreement. President
Thieu has insisted that the United
States insert into the agreement
clauses that amount to an underwriting
of the sovereign independence of
South Vietnam as a national state—in
other words, a total victory at the
peace table.

The American negotiators, not sur-
prisingly, have been angered by Sai-
gon's stand. The U.S. delegation points
out that every American proposal for
peace in Vietnam since May, 1970, has
accepted the presence of North Viet-
namese troops in South Vietnam. All

© 1972, Publishers-Hall Syndicate

Far East

NEW YORK TIMES

18 December 72

Nixon Said to Weigh Steps
To Put Pressure on Hanoi

Aides Report Military and Diplomatic
Measures Are Studied—Kissinger's
Briefing Is Called First Move

By WILLIAM BEECHER
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17—
President Nixon is considering
a number of diplomatic and
military measures designed to
put pressure on North Viet-
nam to reach an early cease-
fire agreement, well-placed Ad-
ministration officials declared
today.

The officials said that Henry
A. Kissinger's news conference
yesterday, at which he said
that negotiations with Hanoi
had failed to reach "a just and
fair agreement," was the first
move in the campaign.

Remining of Ports Weighed

Other steps under considera-
tion, they disclosed include the
following:

"Private diplomatic efforts
to have the Soviet Union, China
and other nations try to use
their influence to get the nego-
tiations "back on track."

"A sudden replacement by
air of mines in Haiphong Har-
bor and other North Vietna-
mese ports above the 20th Par-
allel. In some of these, officials
said, North Vietnamese has be-
gun minesweeping without hin-
drance from the United States.

"And, if other measures fail,
a resumption of some bombing
of military targets north of the
20th Parallel. The United States
stopped such bombing in late
October as a sign of goodwill,
in reaction to Hanoi's concilia-
tory approach to peace nego-
tiations, starting on Oct. 8. Ad-
ministration officials say that a
resumption of bombing north
of the 20th Parallel is the least
likely step to be chosen be-
cause of the danger of scuttling
the peace talks.

Even so, it is not clear whether

the military plans are actually
meant to be carried out or
whether at this point they are
designed to serve as a threat
in the diplomatic process.

Much of the current Washing-
ton planning is predicated on

the conclusion that it is Hanoi's
shifting negotiating tactics that
are primarily responsible for
the continuing delay in reach-
ing agreement. According to
this view, United States military
and diplomatic pressure must
be concentrated on Hanoi if
progress is to be made.

But earlier, high Administra-
tion officials had indicated that
the talks were bogged down
over failure of the negotiators
to satisfy President Nguyen Van
Thieu's requirements for a satis-
factory cease-fire.

Washington officials said that
a major stumbling block was
President Thieu's insistence
that any cease-fire agreement
state unequivocally that the
Saigon Government has the sole
sovereign right to control all
the territory it held before the
Vietnam war began. Adminis-
tration officials said that this
issue, which had been intro-
duced by the United States,
was holding up progress and
that a resolution of this issue
was up to President Nixon and
President Thieu.

But according to United
States officials interviewed in
the last few days, it was North
Vietnam that apparently decid-
ed to renege on certain already
settled issues and proposed
new ones. The North Vietna-
mese were said to have been
acting in the belief that the
Nixon Administration was un-
der so much pressure because
of its own previously optimis-
tic statements that "peace was
within reach," that it might
feel impelled to accept less
tha a adequate terms to achieve
an early truce.

WASHINGTON POST
18 December 1972

Haig Flying
To Saigon

From News Dispatches

President Nixon sent a
top emissary to Southeast
Asia yerday to brief
South Vietnamese President
Thieu and other Indo-
chinese leaders on the dead-
locked peace talks.

Maj. Gen. Alexander L. Haig
Jr., peace negotiator Henry A.
Kissinger's deputy, left for Sa-
gon last night on a four-day
mission to bring allies up to
date on the stalled Paris nego-
tiations.

Haig, accompanied by a con-
tingent of diplomatic and mili-
tary advisers, planned to start
with a round of consultations
with Thieu, U.S. Ambassador,
Ellsworth Bunker and Gen.
Frederick Weyand, the U.S.
military commander in South
Vietnam.

Haig is also scheduled to
confer with Marshal Lon Nol
in Cambodia; Premier Sou-
vanna Phouma in Laos and
Field Marshal Thanom Kitt-
achorn in Thailand.

Presidential press secretary
Ronald L. Ziegler said Haig
would return to Washington
on or about Thursday.

Kissinger, following his
briefing of newsmen on the
negotiations on Saturday, said
late Saturday night that
chances of a peace settlement
by Christmas have faded. But
he insisted that a cease-fire
agreement could be wrapped
up quickly if North Vietnam
would make the "one deci-
sion" to settle the one or two
remaining issues that have
blocked progress.

[Reuter reported from Pe-
king that the North Vietnam-
ese are telling the Chinese
leaders and friendly diplomats
that the major obstacle in
Paris was Washington's re-
fusal to accept that there are
two armies and two adminis-
trations in South Vietnam.
Coupled with American insist-
ence that the Saigon and Ha-
noi governments represent
two separate, sovereign states,
the North Vietnamese are re-
portedly saying, this amount-
ed to an American demand
for a Communist surrender
in which the North would
accept the South's status as a
permanent American vassal-
state.]

Ziegler described the Haig
mission as a "follow-up to

bring the leaders of those
countries abreast of the Paris
negotiations."

Among those accompanying
Haig, who was making his
10th trip to Southeast Asia for
Mr. Nixon, were Laurin B.
Askew, head of the Vietnam
Task Force at the State
Department; John Negroponte

of the National Security Coun-
cil staff, who is fluent in Viet-
namese, and John Bushnell,
another Kissinger aide.

Meanwhile, the official news
agency Tass alleged that Kiss-
singer's explanations for the
latest breakdown in the talks
were merely attempts to
"justify another delay" in
signing the agreement.

At the Vatican, Pope Paul
VI expressed sadness that the
negotiations apparently will
not produce peace in time for
Christmas. "We were waiting
for peace as a Christmas gift
for humanity. But it hasn't
happened yet. It is sad," the
Pope said in his weekly bless-
ing. He added that the peace
talks were a good object les-
son in the necessary relation-
ship between peace and jus-
tice.

In London, British spokes-
men declined official comment
on the deadlock, but privately
they welcomed President Nix-
on's refusal to "be stampeded
into an agreement."

British leaders have made it
clear in the past that they
want an end to the hostilities
in Indochina, but not with an
agreement that would jeopard-
ize Commonwealth members
in the area, especially Singa-
pore and Malaysia.

The Briefs Chinese
On Paris Impasse

Reuter

PEKING, Dec. 18 (Monday)
—Le Due Tho, North Viet-
nam's chief negotiator at the
Paris peace talks, left here for
Hanoi today after receiving
assurances from Premier Chou
En-Lai of China's firm sup-
port.

Tho left a few minutes
after North Vietnamese Polit-
buro member Truong Chinh
had taken off in another spe-
cial plane for Moscow, appar-
ently for talks with Soviet
leaders.

Both men met Chou yes-
terday following the failure of
U.S. and North Vietnamese
negotiators to reach a cease-
fire agreement in Paris.

The New China News Agen-
cy quoted Chou as saying,
"The Vietnam question should
be settled at an early date on
the basis of respect for the

26

NEW YORK TIMES

17 December 72

# Kissinger Says Talks Haven't

## Reached 'Just' Accord

## HE DEFENDS STAND

## Also Says Washington
Won't Allow Thieu
to Veto a Pact

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16—
Henry A. Kissinger said today
that the negotiations between
the United States and North
Vietnam had so far failed to
reach what President Nixon re-
garded as "a just and fair
agreement" to end the Viet-
nam war.

Breaking the Administration's
silence on his just-completed
talks in Paris with Hanoi's chief
negotiator, Le Duc Tho, Mr.
Kissinger acknowledged that
South Vietnam's objections to
an agreement were serious—
adding that the United States
would not allow South Vietnam
to veto an American decision to
sign—but insisted that Hanoi
must accept the largest share
of blame for the failure to
reach an accord.

### Defends U.S. Proposals

"We will not be blackmailed
into an agreement," Mr. Kiss-
singer said in a news con-
fere-
ence. "We will not be stam-
peded into an agreement. And
if I may say so, we will not be
charmed into an agreement,
until its conditions are right."

Mr. Kissinger seemed anxious
to justify his statement on Oct.
26 that "peace is at hand," and
he defended the American pro-
posals made in the latest round
of talks, which apparently
brought counterproposals from
Hanoi that Mr. Kissinger said
had often been "frivolous."

Mr. Kissinger said that there
had been an agreement with
Mr. Tho not to discuss the ne-
gotiations, but that Mr. Nixon
had decided to break it because
it was important not to main-
tain a "charade" in front of the
American people.

### Tells of Frustrations in Paris

This was an apparent refer-
ence to the mood of expecta-
tion that had been created by
the Administration's oft stated
optimism of the last seven
weeks.

Mr. Kissinger said the nego-
tiations were now at "a curious

point." On the one hand, he
said, "we have an agreement
that is 99 per cent completed,"
but on the other, he said, solu-
tion of the remaining 1 per
cent requires a major decision
by Hanoi.

Mr. Kissinger, President Nixon's chief adviser on foreign policy, said that the recent negotiations in Paris with Mr. Tho had been marked by frustration. He said that every time an agreement seemed "just within our reach, it pulled just beyond our reach when we tried to grasp it."

For example, he said, last
Sunday the two sides seemed
so close to an accord that Mr.
Nixon summoned Gen. Alexander
M. Haig Jr., Mr. Kissinger's
department, back to Washington to
prepare to go to Saigon with
the proposed agreement.

Technical teams, which began work on Monday, were supposed to wrap up the agreement, Mr. Kissinger said, but instead, Hanoi brought in 17 new changes in the text. And when one problem was solved, he said, it would reappear later in a new Hanoi proposal somewhere else, either in accompanying protocols or in a list of "understandings" that would accompany the formal text of an agreement.

Mr. Kissinger provided details of some aspects of the negotiations and refrained from giving details on others.

From his discussion, he left
the impression that there were
two matters of substance that
Mr. Nixon considered crucial to
an agreement:

The first dealt with the ques-
tion of an international super-
visory team to check on the
cease-fire.

Mr. Kissinger said Hanoi refused to discuss details of its activity until the day before he was to return to Washington. He said the United States believed the force should consist of several thousand members—5,000 has been mentioned in private—and should have freedom of movement.

But he said that Hanoi wanted to limit the force—of Canadians, Hungarians,Indo-nesians and Poles—to 25, of whom nearly half would be limited to headquarters. The North Vietnamese also insisted that the force should have transport or communications of its own, and should move only with escorts, he said.

"It is our impression that the
members of this (supervisory)
commission will not exhaust
themselves in frenzies of activ-
ity if this procedure were
adopted," he said.

The second, and potentially
more difficult to solve, dealt
with an issue that apparently
was raised by the United States
in the latest round of negotia-
tions—efforts to get the agree-

ment to make clear that Saigon
had complete sovereignty over
South Vietnam.

Details of this dispute were
made known to The New York
Times in Paris last week, but
Mr. Kissinger refused to dis-
cuss them today in more than
general terms.

He said the United States
wanted to insure that the agree-

ment made it clear that "the
two parts of Vietnam would
live in peace with each other."

Mr. Kissinger said that this
was "a fundamental point"
that had been accepted tow
weeks ago, and then rejected by
Hanoi at the talks. "We are
not raising a new fundamental
point, eW are raising the ac-
cceptance of something that had
already once been accepted,"
he said.

### Demands of Thieu Noted

"I can't consider it an ex-
tremely onerous demand to say
that the parties to a peace set-
tlement should live in peace
with one another, and we can-
not make a settlement which
brings peace to North Vietnam
and maintain the war in South
Vietnam," he said.

Mr. Thieu had been demanding the total withdrawal of all North Vietnamese forces—said by American sources to number 145,000—from South Vietnam, but the United States has rejected that demand as unreasonable, Mr. Kissinger said.

But he indicated that the
United States would continue
to support Saigon on the more
general problem of getting a
pledge from Hanoi not to inter-
vine in South Vietnamese
affairs.

He said that the United
States would not allow South
Vietnam to veto an American
regard to sign what Mr. Nixon
considered as a good agreement.

But he said, "Today, this
question is moot. We have not
yet reached an agreement which
the President considers just
and fair."

### Seems on Defensive

Mr. Kissinger's presentation
was often repetitive and he
seemed tired and a bit on the
defensive. He left room for
questions, but he failed to an-
swer in detail queries about
why North Vietnam had
changed its seemingly concul-
itative attitude of October.

Many published reports have
charged that the impasse in the
Paris negotiations was caused
by the American insistence on
getting Hanoi to recognize Sa-
gon's sovereignty, in effect,
giving up the idea of a united
Vietnam under Hanoi's rule.
Implicit in such recognition
would also be the disavowal of
the National Liberation Front,
or Vietcong.

This interpretation has held
that Mr. Nixon had to make a
fundamental decision whether
to continue backing Saigon or
to go for the accord available
with Hanoi now.

Vietnamese people's basic na-
tional rights."

North Vietnamese diplomats here told other envoys that the problems arose because Washington questioned basic points in the draft peace settlement worked out by the two sides in October.

In the latest series of talks
just ended Kissinger said that
Washington does not accept
that there are two military
forces and two administrations
in South Vietnam—the Saigon
government and the Vietcong,
according to highly reliable
sources quoting North Viet-
namese diplomats.

The North Vietnamese reportedly told the representatives here of countries friendily to them that Hanoi is willing to go on talking in Paris but that Washington should withdraw "absurd proposals" It had recently made and talk on the basis of the agreement already reached.

These new U.S. proposals
purportedly questioned the
principle of two forces and ad-
ministrations in the South and
called for the establishment of
a permanent border at the De-
militarized Zone, the sources
said. Hanoi envoys had said
this would permanently divide
Vietnam countries and make
Saigon a permanent vassal
state of the United States.

North Vietnamese envoys
here said they would never ac-
cepts such provisions. The
sources, quoting Hanoi dip-
lomats, said Kissinger had
again raised the question of
"so-called" North Vietnamese
forces in South Vietnam and
called for their withdrawal.

The North Vietnamese diplo-
matets projected a picture of
the Americans virtually ask-
ing for their surrender and
calling for concessions that
would put them back in a poli-
tical and military posture sim-
ilar to the late 1960s.

Observers in Peking noted
that the situation at the talks
as presented here differs
markedly from Kissinger's de-
scription of the agreement as
"99 per cent complete" and
that much more than the ques-
tion of International super-
visory machinery remained at
issue.

27

BROADCAST HOUSE / WASHINGTON, D.C. 20017-202-680-0000

WTOP-TV 9

December 18, 1972

EDWIN DIAMOND COMMENTARY - KISSINGER AND PEACE

The breakdown in the Paris peace talks and the renewed air war in Vietnam should not come as a surprise to any one who has read, carefully, Henry Kissinger's now-famous "Peace is at hand" news briefing of October 26.

The transcript shows that the difficulties of getting peace, as opposed to an "agreement in principle," were and still are monumental. The trouble is, not too many people read the fine print closely. The media, with a few exceptions, all threw their hats in the air and started cheering the peace "settlement." NBC News, for example, devoted its entire evening newscast that night to Kissinger. The news magazines featured doves fluttering on their covers. The skeptics were dismissed as secret McGovernites, or worse...

Well, the skeptics turned out to be right, though no one can take any pleasure in knowing that peace isn't at hand. But the question is, not who was right but why so many media people went wrong, and what can be done about it.

The key to the Kissinger performance seems to be the briefing system. The reporters assemble at the government's convenience and with no preparation, they try to listen as much to what is being said as to what is being omitted. At best, they are in the position of highly paid stenographers, taking notes, shooting film, but helpless to probe under the surface.

There has to be a better way to cover such peace-and-war issues; at lease when there was a real State Department and a conscientious Congress, reporters had other sources to check out. Now there is only Henry Kissinger, who is actually a surrogate for Mr. Nixon. And the president in turn is inaccessible to almost all reporters, choosing to address them instead through his own stenographer, Henry Kissinger. For the public, it is all becoming a remote pre-recorded announcement.

# # #

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT 13 DECEMBER 1972

(12)

U.S. AND RUSSIA—
“WORKING TOWARD
A COMMON GOAL”

Interview With Rocco A. Petrone,
Director of the Apollo Program

What will U. S. and Russia get out of a jointly
manned space mission? How much will it cost?
Are other such flights planned? For answers,
"U. S. News & World Report" interviewed the
head of the nation's man-in-space project.

Q Dr. Petrone, what is the purpose of the joint U. S.-Russian flight in 1975?

A The prime purpose of the mission is to demonstrate the universal docking system that both countries are developing.

Through the use of this system, it will be possible for

spacecraft of one nation to dock with a spacecraft from another country. One could rescue the other in the event of an emergency.

It's also the first major step in space co-operation between our two countries. Now our two countries are working together toward achieving a common goal in space. The implications are profound—showing that, although we are competitive, and I believe we'll stay competitive, we can still co-operate in space.

Q Whose idea originally was it to have this joint flight—theirs or ours?

A It was a little of both.

There had been discussions between the two countries of possible space co-operation as far back as the Kennedy Administration, but it was Dr. Thomas O. Paine, who was head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1969 to 1970, who gave it a new start by exchanging a series of letters with the top Soviet science officials, and the two countries really got down to specifics after that. I don't think either country pushed harder than the other to get things going.

Q With all that the U. S. already knows about space flight, what will we learn out of this joint project with the Russians?

A The primary gain will be a demonstration of co-operation in one of the new frontiers of mankind. It's very much like the development of freedom of the oceans over the years. You say, "What are we going to learn?" In effect, we're going to learn how to function, co-operate and live together in space.

Q Will we learn anything from them—or they from us—about space technology?

A We do not believe there will be a transfer of technology. We won't give them our achievements in metallurgy, for example.

Our space program is run in a fish bowl, and they already know a great deal about our technology. What we will be exchanging are disciplines—their way of operating while in space, and our way.

The reason we're going to be successful in it is we're not trying to solve the political problems that face the two countries. Here we both have the same basic objectives—to fly the mission, demonstrate that it will work, and bring our men home safely.

Q Is there any possibility that they will be learning valuable military secrets about our space program?

A No. I do not think they will learn more than they either already know or haven't bothered reading in the

Dr. Petrone

open press.

Q Will we learn a lot about their technology which has been hidden from us before?

A No, but we're going to learn the fundamentals of their program, because we're going to have to understand them in order to work together.

We will have to have an intimate relationship with them, for example, on how pressure is controlled and how certain measurements are made.

In that regard, rubbing shoulders is certainly going to transfer information both ways. We will learn more of the fundamentals of their program than we know today.

Q Will this mission lead to more and more co-operative flights with the Russians in earth orbit—or to the moon or Mars in the future?

A I hope so. But there are no plans beyond this one mission. I certainly hope that it's the beginning of a relationship that will let us both do the most we can in space.

The greatest possibility in the future is for more joint earth-orbital flights. It may eventually be possible for Americans to fly out to a Russian space station, or they to one of ours.

Manned flights to Mars, of course, are much farther down the road, though I am certain they will someday take place. It will be a while before anybody knows for sure if the first flight there will be by one nation or a consortium of countries.

Apollo-Soyuz has to be considered a breakthrough and a first step that has to be demonstrated before one would ever talk more complex things.

Q Will this flight lead to eventual joint U. S.-Russian use of our launch facilities at Cape Kennedy and theirs at Tyuratam and Baikonur?

A We haven't talked about that yet, because we don't have to.

When Dr. Boris Petrov [a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences] was in the U. S., he was asked if Americans will be allowed to visit Russian launch facilities. His response was very diplomatic. He said that these launchings will be conducted under the same conditions as all previous launchings because, for this particular flight, the co-operation and work is in the control and docking of the two vehicles, not in the launch of these two vehicles.

These are very complex questions that we haven't tackled yet, and won't tackle until more basic matters about the first mission are settled.

Q How much will the U. S. share of the Apollo-Soyuz mission cost?

A We have estimated it will cost 250 million dollars. That would be the total development, testing and operation of the flight, and of the experiments we plan to operate in the program.

Q Is there going to be money in the future for new U. S. manned programs—such as going back to the moon?

A Excluding the space-shuttle and Skylab programs, which are already in the works, there is no money at present budgeted for beginning work on new manned programs.

Before we come to that, we want to perfect our "building blocks" for future space travel by completing the space shuttle and developing what we call a "tug"—a transfer stage to move from low earth orbit to higher orbit. The next step after that would be to move to lunar orbit, and eventually establish a scientific base on the moon.

Q Do you think the next U. S. landing on the moon will be a joint venture with the Russians?

A I don't think necessarily that it would be "joint" in the sense of men from both countries flying there in the same vehicle.

But I think we could have a project that would be co-operative—as we're already doing in Antarctica—with astronauts of both countries working together on scientific studies at the same base on the moon.

I think we can co-operate in exploring the moon and space by working in close harmony with the Russians at one or two nearby bases, and each one specializing in various scientific endeavors.

It would make it all much safer, because help would be nearby in case anyone got into trouble up there.

Q Is U. S.-Russian co-operation on the moon, in that sense, a good possibility?

A Yes, a good possibility.

S-F

WALL STREET JOURNAL

19 December 1972

## That Elusive Peace

October's optimism about a Viet-
nam peace agreement is becoming tar-
nished, but before a new wave of re-
crimination breaks out it might be
worthwhile to recall the sequence of
events that has brought us to our pres-
ent puzzlement.

Some of the puzzlement stems from a lack of a general perception of what kind of "peace" was possible in October and may be possible over the next several months. The administration deserves some blame for the lack of understanding, but there are some mitigating factors that go a long way in explaining its complicity in the October surge of optimism.

An imperfect recollection of events might suggest that Mr. Kissinger's statement on Oct. 26 that "peace is at hand" was a ploy to help get Mr. Nixon reelected. Mr. Nixon did want to be reelected of course, and this may have stimulated some of the administration's cheerfulness.

But it should be remembered that the initiatives that led to Mr. Kissinger's statement were largely made by Hanoi. It broke the negotiating logjam on Oct. 8 and Mr. Kissinger's famous press briefing on terms of the still incomplete draft agreement did not come until after Hanoi had broken the story by broadcasting terms of the agreement on its radio.

As Mr. Kissinger said then and said again Saturday, there were some important loose ends, dealing principally with whether there was to be any real recognition of Saigon's sovereignty in the south. There is every reason to believe that Hanoi wanted that ambiguity (and thought it could get it just before the election), because it saw the agreement as only another milestone in its long march towards ultimate control of all Vietnam. Its troop movements to seize further territory in late October and its heavy resupply operations since then all support this thesis.

The strategy didn't work quite the way Hanoi planned it; Mr. Nixon did not jump at the proffered agreement. His willingness to insist on a solid agreement when there was a great temptation to accept an easy way out is to his credit. But it is, of course, no cause for rejoicing. The post-election unwillingness of Hanoi to complete the negotiations merely confirms that its ambitions for mastery over the south persist, as realists would have assumed all along.

Hanoi may well have decided after the election to swing back to the waiting game and let the political pot in the U.S. come back to a boil when the new session of Congress starts. There are too many uncertainties about the make-up of the new Congress to know whether this will also be a Hanoi mis calculation. There can be little doubt that most Americans still want badly to bring the Vietnam business to a halt but Mr. Nixon's reelection leaves less reason than ever to believe that most Americans are willing to sacrifice American credibility to that end.

A hard look at reality would suggest that some sort of struggle will continue in Vietnam even if an agreement is reached; real peace probably is not at

EDITORIALS

NEW YORK NEWS

19 December 1972

THE WRAPS ARE OFF AGAIN

American bombers ranged over North Vietnam north of the 20th Parallel yesterday, ending a self-imposed limitation Washington adopted in the bubbly days of October, when a negotiated peace seemed just inches away.

Secretary Laird

News that the ban had been lifted came in a matter-of-fact announcement by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird.

Nonetheless, it is bound to touch off a new round of twittering among U.S. doves, who flutter nervously every time President Richard M. Nixon uses the military prod to awaken Hanoi to the facts of life.

The Red enemy has been spinning out the peace talks with every gambit in its ample bag of diplomatic tricks. Meanwhile, the Communists have taken advantage of the bombing curb, put into effect as a sign of good faith, to pour men and arms into South Vietnam.

It was a test of America's will, pure and simple, and Mr. Nixon's response was fast and plain: U.S. air power will not be leashed indefinitely while Hanoi dawdles on a final, clear-cut, honorable settlement.

The way to peace and permanent relief from bombing is open to North Vietnam any time it is ready for a real peace effort. Until that day comes, the enemy shouldn't expect immunity from attack while prolonging the conflict.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER 19 December 1972

Dr. Kissinger explains it

Henry Kissinger's long and incredibly complex "account of the negotiations as they stand today" proves again that it is harder to get out of a war than into one.

Dr. Kissinger held a new conference to explain why the peace in Vietnam which he said was "at hand" on Oct. 26 has not yet come about. He said at the outset, "I cannot go into details of particular issues." That is understandable, considering the delicacy of the diplomacy that President Nixon's foreign policy adviser has been conducting with remarkable patience this fall in a persistent effort to nail down peace terms.

Despite the absence of detail, Dr. Kissinger's blow-by-blow description of frustrations encountered in negotiation with Hanoi probably will earn a place on the required reading list for aspiring foreign service officers. "Linguistic difficulties" involved in putting on paper the specifics of what was agreed to orally in principle have become far more formidable than was anticipated two months ago.

He recalled one point in the talks

when the North Vietnamese presented "17 new changes in the guise of linguistic changes." By the time agreement had been reached on 15 they submitted 16 more, "some of which now still remain unsettled."

Dr. Kissinger said "we have an agreement that is 99 percent complete." When asked about that remaining one percent, he hedged: "I have found that I get into trouble when I give figures. Let me not insist on one percent. It is an agreement that is substantially completed."

Throughout his news conference the theme that seemed to transcend everything else is Dr. Kissinger's determination to achieve the substance rather than merely the appearance of a workable peace settlement.

He is being overly meticulous, his critics might say, but it is far better to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" than to sign a document crippled by ambiguities. His painstaking patience has earned the patience of those who are tempted to dismiss the efforts as a losing cause.

hand and will not be for a long time. But the immediate issue is not solving the political problems of Indochina once and for all, but arriving at terms that provide a reasonably honorable end to the American military role.

That role has already been sharply reduced by the administration's troop withdrawals. Despite the new pessimism, there still has been far more movement on the negotiating front in the past few months than in long years before. American and North Vietnam-

ese negotiators are now engaged in a private and public contest that will determine an agreement's terms.

This contest may lead to further surges of optimism and pessimism like the ones we have seen over the last few months. But we have come a long way since 1968 and even since last September. Despite the tragic history of the war, the men and policies that have brought us this far deserve support and good wishes as they cope with the difficulties of the final mile.

1-E

WASHINGTON POST 19 December 1972

# The Great Peace Charade

> "Charade: a parlor game in which the players are typically divided into teams, members of which take turns in acting out in pantomime a word or phrase, often syllable by syllable, which members of their own team must guess."—the Random House Dictionary of the English Language.

As Dr. Henry Kissinger tells it, the North Vietnamese have engaged in procedures in Paris that "can only mock the hopes of humanity" and so the President has decided that "we could not engage in a charade with the American people". So the talks have been suspended and the bombing of the North above the 20th parallel has been resumed, presumably to knock some sense into the heads of the men in Hanoi. Well, we do not doubt from Dr. Kissinger's account, that the North Vietnamese are up to some dark and dubious bargaining tricks; on the contrary we would be surprised if they weren't. And we are astonished that the President's chief Vietnam negotiator, who is not exactly new to dealing with Communist negotiators, seems so surprised that the North Vietnamese are not behaving like perfect gentlemen. The tactic of suddenly reintroducing new and hard demands, of reneging on tentative past agreements in advance of an across-the-board settlement, of seeking to squeeze out last minute concessions and to undermine broadly-stated principles—all this is familiar stuff, reminiscent of almost all of the classic confrontations with the Russians and others across countless bargaining tables over the years.

Nor do we doubt that the proposals that the Communists presented to us in the last few days of the talks last week would in fact make a shambles of a cease fire, and as Dr. Kissinger argues, give North Vietnamese operatives a license to spread across the countryside and enter every village in the South as members of inspection teams ostensibly charged with keeping the peace. The President and his negotiator were probably well advised under the circumstances not to accept terms which would have given formal endorsement to a peace plan which would deny the Thieu government or any other independent regime in Saigon a reasonable chance to work out its own destiny.

But not having ourselves introduced the word "charade" into the conversation, we feel free to call attention to its dictionary definition: it is a game "in which the players are typically divided into teams"—that is to say, it takes two teams to play. And it is our reluctant conclusion, that Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger have made their own considerable contribution to this particular charade. The word they have been trying to get across to their team members, which is to say, the American public, is "peace"—as in "peace is at hand." And it is important to remember that the critical piece of pantomime, if you will, was played out on television on the eve of the national election, with the most careful calculation, with what had to be enormous political effect. Everything we were told by Dr. Kissinger on October 26th pointed in one clear direction: a settlement was within handy reach, a matter of a few days and a little good will; the American role in the war was just about over; the President,

had for all practical purposes fulfilled his 1968 campaign pledge, renewed in 1969, to "end the war" in Vietnam.

Now the very least that can be said, on the basis of Dr. Kissinger's latest progress report on the war, last Saturday, is that he and the President have been taken for a long hard ride by the North Vietnamese; in short, they have been had, by Dr. Kissinger's own admission, and so have all of us by indirection, because nobody is any longer talking about peace being at hand. Rather, we are being told that every time we reach out for it, Hanoi's bargainers snatch it from our grasp.

We are still, of course, getting some of the same old pantomime: "great progress has been made... we have an agreement that is 99 per cent completed"... although Dr. Kissinger concedes that the remaining one per cent is "a fundamental point." We do not know, because nobody's saying what this last difficulty is. But our own interpretation of Dr. Kissinger's analyses suggests that what remains to be decided, while it may turn on such specifics as the machinery of cease-fire enforcement, is in fact nothing less than the political future of South Vietnam. That is to say, what remains to be settled is what the war has been fought over for several decades.

This, in our view, is a large part of what gives the talks the character of a charade. For as they have been presented to us by the Nixon administration, the talks are supposed to produce "peace"; they are supposed to reconcile the diametrically opposed objectives of North and South Vietnam in a way that will satisfy the interests of both sides and justify hundreds of thousands of deaths and endless expenditures. And this, in our view, cannot be done. As we have argued, there is no conceivable settlement short of an unwinnable victory in conventional terms that will not impose on both sides a risk of losing almost everything each has been fighting for while simultaneously granting both sides some reasonable opportunity of achieving through a settlement and a cease fire what they have been unable to achieve by force of arms. It is nonsense to suppose, after an end to the fighting as it has been waged the past ten years, that the struggle will not continue in other, subtler forms—to suppose that Hanoi has abandoned its objective because of the bombing and because of the big power diplomacy conducted by Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger with the Russians and the Chinese. The performance of the North Vietnamese negotiators late last week, you would think, offers conclusive proof of this.

And yet, the President gives no evidence of being prepared to accept this harsh reality. He continues—mostly through his spokesman these days—to hold out this bright promise of enduring peace, when the most he can hope to achieve is an American disengagement from the conflict on terms which will bring back our prisoners and leave the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance of survival by their own efforts and out of their own will. This is the risk Mr. Nixon will not face up to. And that, in turn, is why it will take more than an end to Hanoi's pantomime to put a stop to the Great Peace Charade.

WALL STREET JOURNAL 19 December 1972

World-Wide

NINON ESCALATED BOMBING of North Vietnam; targets in Hanoi suburbs were hit.

The White House said the President personally ordered resumption of full-scale bombing of North Vietnam. He acted, the White House said, to cope with a buildup of Communist forces "which could lead to another offensive in the South." Radio Hanoi reported a "devastating" raid Monday night, the first since U.S. bombs killed a French diplomat in the French Mission Oct. 11. Radio Hanoi indicated at least

four American planes were shot down "after several American pilots were captured." In Paris, Hanoi broke off technical talks with the U.S. to retaliate for the renewed bombing.

The raids, said to be the heaviest of the year against the Hanoi-Haiphong area, were carried by some as a renewed effort to bomb Hanoi into a compromise peace settlement.

Unauthorized bombing was praised by a House subcommittee as "not only proper but essential." The panel said the U.S. strikes ordered by Gen. John D. Lavelle were justified by a new enemy radar setup that put U.S. pi-

lots in danger of being fired on without warning. At the time of the raids, "protective reaction" rules were in effect. These said, in essence, that pilots could fire only when threatened by specific hostile acts. The new radar "setup, it said, constituted a constant threat.

Five antiwar activists were held on charges of sabotaging railroad equipment near a York, Pa., factory that makes bomb casings used in Indochina. The five, all from New Jersey, were accused of pouring concrete into a Penn Central switch. Police said they were members of the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives,

2-E

NEW YORK TIMES 19 December 1972

Bombs Away...

The best hope for peace in Indochina since 1954 has been severely shaken by a hail of American bombs on Haiphong and the outskirts of Hanoi in a turn from negotiation once again to confrontation. Whatever else the resumed bombing of North Vietnam above the 20th Parallel may accomplish, it is not likely to hasten—and could indefinitely postpone—the “just and fair” agreement that Henry Kissinger has said is the President’s objective.

There will be endless argument over the cause of the breakdown in negotiations that Mr. Kissinger had hailed so optimistically only two months ago, on the eve of the Presidential election. Mr. Nixon's top foreign policy adviser has attempted to pin the blame solely on the North Vietnamese, who no doubt have indulged in the exasperating nitpicking and backing and hauling that have always characterized Communist negotiators.

Others can point with impressive authority to Saigon, where President Thieu is reaping the rewards of stubborn opposition to terms that he rightly perceived threatened his tenuous hold on a war-weary South Vietnam. Certainly Mr. Thieu is the principal beneficiary of the failure in Paris, which he promptly and openly did all in his power to bring about.

But it was Washington that introduced Mr. Thieu's substantive demands into the Paris talks, upsetting the tentative agreement that had been hammered out in October and opening the way to counterdemands from the other side. It is President Nixon, according to all available testimony, who is now insisting that a final accord somehow require Hanoi to recognize that Saigon is to remain in control of the South.

However devoutly to be wished, this is an unrealistic condition that attempts to impose at the peace table a political solution that has not been won—and cannot be won—on the field of battle. Even if the Communists finally agreed to the elaborate supervisory machinery proposed by Mr. Kissinger, no international observer force could guarantee survival of the American-backed anti-Communist regime in Saigon after American forces were withdrawn. Everyone from the White House down—and especially the White House—must have realized this from the outset.

What Mr. Kissinger said the other day about Hanoi is just as applicable to Washington. "It is paradoxically easier," he observed, "to face the risks of war than the uncertainty of peace." The United States will never extricate itself from the immense material, moral and human costs of the Indochina conflict until a President—or Congress—has the courage to face the uncertainties of a peace which must inevitably leave the political fate of Vietnam to be decided by the Vietnamese themselves.

...Deception or Naivete?

By their own words, President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were either deceptive or naïve in their pre-election assurances to the American people about the imminence of peace in Vietnam. This is the sorry conclusion from the White House negotiator's remarkable briefing last

Saturday.

Dissembling leaps out of seeming candor. Mr. Kissinger speaks of a "massive Communist effort to launch an attack throughout South Vietnam," but says nothing about the accelerated shipments of American war materiel also under way those last days of October in anticipation of a cease-fire.

The official record now shows just how flimsy was the basis for the optimistic White House statements of Oct. 26. The machinery for international supervision of the cease-fire, for example. Apparently North Vietnam's detailed proposals for establishing such a mechanism were not even on the table until last week. However reprehensible was Hanoi's delay in presenting these "protocols," it is difficult to understand how anyone familiar with the workings of the stillborn International Control Commission after 1954 could have possibly concluded, as Mr. Kissinger put it, that this was "a largely technical matter."

Mr. Kissinger says the Administration wanted the agreement to "make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other and that neither side would impose its solution on the other by force." Now what do President Nixon and his advisers believe that the history of Vietnam for the last eighteen years has been all about? Far from being a "modest" requirement "relatively easily achievable," as Mr. Kissinger would have us believe, this condition is nothing less than the point of the whole war, through the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations.

Mr. Kissinger is no doubt accurate in describing how the North Vietnamese constantly maneuvered the past month to gain substantive points under guise of technical formulations; but what would one expect of negotiations between adversaries? Talk of showing "good will" does not fall gracefully from the mouthpieces of an Administration which showered Vietnam with the heaviest bombardments of the war right after declaring that peace is at hand. Probably Hanoi did try to walk away from a handshake agreement; but Mr. Kissinger's account gives ample evidence that Washington, presumably under pressure from President Thieu, did likewise. In diplomacy, as in all human relations, it is basic wisdom to suspect anyone who lays all blame on his adversary.

Denying any deception, Administration spokesmen argue that it was Hanoi, and not Washington, that publicized the nine-point accord before the American election. This is true, but insignificant. If the Nixon Administration had wished to convey the reservations it now holds, it could easily have responded to Hanoi's statement noncommittily or without fanfare. There was no need to answer a radio broadcast with a public White House presentation heralding the imminent end of a decade of warfare and stating, in Mr. Kissinger's words just twelve days before the Presidential election: "We have undertaken, and I repeat it here publicly, to settle [the issues remaining] at one more meeting."

Peace was not at hand, and Mr. Kissinger has given no convincing reasons for believing that it was. Between the alternatives of deception and naivete, the second Nixon Administration opens on the foundation of a formidable ambiguity.

MAN'S LUNAR THEORIES are seen undergoing major revision because of Apollo 17.

Mission Control told the astronauts that their observations of orange soil on the moon, a solid clue to past volcanic activity, had prompted a review of color photos taken by Apollo 14. The review disclosed "brownish and orangish colorations on a bulbous dome in the crater Langrenus." Another section of the geologists' report said the orange soil means there

may be other "relatively young volcanic features. Such a discovery would result in a major revision of current thermal" theories about the moon. The three Apollo 17 astronauts, meanwhile, streaked toward today's splashdown.

The only problem facing the three was a last pair of scissors. It could become a dangerous projectile during reentry.

Mandatory chapel attendance at U.S. military academies was ended by the Supreme Court. It turned down the government's argument that future officers must have "an appreciation of our moral and religious heritage." It also let stand a ruling giving the government access to names of contributors to a U.S. group allegedly linked to the Irish Republican Army.

3-E

LOS ANGELES TIMES 18 December 1972 (19)

# The Risks of Peace in Vietnam

The impasse in the Vietnam peace negotiations is a bitter disappointment. Peace before Christmas had been the expectation when the Paris talks resumed just two weeks ago.

There is at least the consolation of Henry A. Kissinger's statement Saturday that peace is closer now than it was at the end of October, when the world first learned of the tentative agreement on a nine-point plan. The United States and North Vietnam are still in contact. There is no break.

But the vastness of the task has been made more evident.

It now is clear that President Nixon could have nailed down the nine-point peace plan on Oct. 31. The plan would have cleared the last American from Vietnam in 60 days, ended the bombing, brought home the prisoners of war. But Mr. Nixon chose not to take it, and in effect rejected on Oct. 22 what he had accepted two days before, because of fresh evidence of a North Vietnamese troop buildup in South Vietnam that appeared committed to a takeover, to such massive cheating on the cease-fire that more war, not peace, was the likely outcome.

The fundamental question in Paris may, therefore, have become how the United States can arrange more security for Saigon than was provided in the October agreement. Kissinger, in his press conference on Saturday, spoke of American determination to deny North Vietnam "a right of constant intervention in the south," and he said the United States wanted the peace agreement to include recognition, "however vague," of the two separate parts of the Vietnam nation.

On the one hand, Kissinger was saying in more precise terms than ever before that President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam held no veto power over American peace negotiations. But or the other hand he was emphasizing with greater

precision the American commitment to maintain South Vietnam as a non-Communist nation.

We have misgivings about this emphasis, not because we would welcome a Communist takeover in Saigon, or anywhere else, but because we are convinced that there is nothing more for the United States to do in Vietnam. For 18 years this nation, through clandestine maneuvers, then overt intervention, and at an unreasonable price in men, goods and integrity, has sought to shore up an alternative, any alternative, to communism in South Vietnam. The failure of the United States to guarantee a non-Communist government through battle will not be corrected at the conference table.

Admittedly, there is cause for worry. Kissinger has given some detail of the stalling tactics of the North Vietnamese in the peace talks. Perhaps it was nothing more than diplomatic retaliation for the embarrassment caused by Mr. Nixon's insistence in October on more negotiations. But the reluctance to bring up practical measures for policing the cease-fire lent credence to suspicions that Han-oi may have intended the agreement solely as a means to get rid of the last American while screening a continuation of the war.

But these fears must be balanced against the brutal reality of the situation. Few if any serious observers of Indochina have thought that a paper negotiated in Paris would bring perfect peace to Southeast Asia. There simply is no international peace-keeping force that could possibly guarantee the terms being talked about. The ultimate consideration has had to be pragmatic—how to end the American intervention, how to improve the chances of peace, how to make sure that, if war is to continue, it is a Vietnamese war.

The United States must make sure that old illusions that brought the first Americans to the battlefields of Vietnam do not now deter the removal of the last Americans from those battlefields.

WASHINGTON POST
19 December 1972 P19

## Fighting at Quangtri
Continues for 3d Day

From News Dispatches

SAIGON, Dec. 18—Heavy fighting was reported for the third successive day Monday in South Vietnam's northernmost Quangtri Province, just below the Demilitarized Zone.

The Saigon command said fresh, tank-backed North Vietnamese troops massing near Quangtri were badly mauled by South Vietnamese paratroopers. At least 307 North Vietnamese troops were killed in 36 hours of fighting ending at dusk Sunday, the command said.

In Laos, Communist forces fired 31 rockets early Monday into the airfield at Luang Prabang, the royal capital 140 miles north of Vientiane.

A U.S. spokesman said the attack wounded at least one soldier and two civilians, destroyed a twin-engine plane and damaged a helicopter and the fuel-storage depot. It was the first rocket attack on the field since Nov. 13.

BALTIMORE SUN 19 December 1972

# Whitlam Stirs Up Australia

Where some other leaders make a point of announcing major programs and policy changes within their first 100 days or so in office, Australia's new prime minister, Labor party leader Gough Whitlam, has done it in not much more than that many hours. Australians, who are not easily astonished, find themselves astonished this time.

Some of Mr. Whitlam's alterations may be dismissed as mere if excellent showmanship, such as his putting the prime ministerial Bentley automobile up for sale, his scrapping of the New Year's Honors list prepared by his predecessor, William McMahon (which means that a few McMahon associates will not receive their expected knighthoods) and proclaiming an end to the tax on wine. His wife as well has participated in the act, coming out with a virtual women's lib series of statements

which have shocked some Australians who happen to be temperamentally staid.

Yet it is not a show. Substantial domestic reforms are projected, and above all the new Prime Minister has in some respects simply seemed to turn Australian foreign policy around. The men remaining to train South Vietnamese and Cambodian troops, after the main Australian pullout last spring, will come home at once. Conscription is to end, and conscription-evaders are to be released from prison. South African sports teams are banned and the Rhodesian Information Center closed down. The entire exercise has an air of thoroughness about it.

In emphasis of what is happening Mr. Whitlam says he favors a national anthem to replace "God Save the Queen," and John Arm-

strong, newly-named ambassador to London, declares nothing is more certain than that Australia will eventually become a republic.

Actually of course none of this is so amazing as it may appear at first blush. Much of Mr. Whitlam's program, at home and abroad, amounts just to an application of Labor party policy. And much of it represents a drift, or better a movement, apparent in Australian affairs for a long time; a trend toward independence and larger self-dependence, with the ties to Britain steadily loosening. Historically it may perhaps be traced to the World War II barbed wire on the Sydney beaches, placed there in the sudden knowledge that the British Navy no longer afforded protection, and in one degree of acceleration or another it has been constant ever since.

4-E

FEATURES

COLUMNISTS

BALTIMORE SUN 19 DECEMBER 1972

Analysis: U.S. pragmatism vs. Hanoi's tactics

in Paris

By SCOTT SULLIVAN

Paris Bureau of The Sun

Paris — Henry A. Kissinger's detailed account of the final three weeks of secret negotiations toward a Vietnam peace treaty varies in a variety of crucial respects from accounts gathered here from sources close to the Communist delegations.

Dr. Kissinger predicted as much in his press conference Saturday, when he said: "I have no doubt that before too long we will hear a version of events that does not exactly coincide."

They blame the U.S.

Predictably enough, the version of the negotiations which has filtered out from several Communist sources lays the blame for delay and the charge of intractability at the feet of the American negotiators.

More disturbingly, the Communist version, in both its public and private forms, is distinctly more static — and more pessimistic — than is Dr. Kissinger's.

President Nixon's special security adviser repeated several times Saturday that "great progress has been made" and that "the only thing that is lacking is one decision in Hanoi."

"To change content"

In public Communist spokesmen here have described the talks as being "at a dead end," because the United States has sought "to change the content" of the agreement reached in October.

In private, members of the Hanoi and Viet Cong delegations have described the talks to sympathetic listeners as "a game of madmen" in which Dr. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, his negotiating partner, spent their time conducting "academic discussions" of matters of principle.

So far, no Communist figure in a position to know has challenged Dr. Kissinger's description of the negotiations as a series of steps forward and steps back appearing under the guise of "linguistic changes" in the treaty and its attendant protocols and "understandings."

At the same time, however,
(CONT. NEXT PAGE)

WASHINGTON POST 19 DECEMBER 1972

Kissinger Version of Talks
Raises Doubts in Paris

By Jonathan C. Randal

Washington Post Foreign Service

PARIS, Dec. 18—Political observers in Paris are not buying Henry Kissinger's version pinning all the blame on Hanoi for the breakdown of the Vietnam peace talks.

There were simply too many seeming inconsistencies in Kissinger's performance Saturday, the observers here say, to accept his version, however well his remarks went down in the United States.

Moreover, Kissinger suggested that the modalities for policing an eventual cease-fire was a major complication causing the breakdown in the talks. But observers here have been convinced that the real sticking point involved the so-called National Council of Reconciliation and Concord, a body which theoretically is to be made up of equal numbers of Vietcong, Saigon and neutralist members.

Its mission, as vaguely defined by Hanoi in October,

News Analysis

is to "activate" the cease-fire accord and help organize elections during the transition period.

South Vietnamese President Thieu has denounced the council as a disguised form of coalition government, a solution he has steadfastly rejected.

What stuck in Thieu's throat was the Vietnamese language description for the council. While in English it was innocuously described as an "administrative structure," in Vietnamese and French it was called a "structure of power" suggesting the diminution of authority of the Saigon regime after a cease-fire.

So intense was his opposition that in November Thieu persuaded the United States to propose changes in the draft accord which cut out the neutralist third of its membership and vetoed the council's right to operate at

the province, village and hamlet level.

Although Kissinger or members of his entourage last week leaked word that problems of South Vietnam ese sovereignty were the main sticking point, observers here believe the question was posed in more practical and less theological terms than Kissinger has admitted then or since.

Nor do observers believe that the formal recognition of the Demilitarized Zone now separating the two Vietnam is that serious an obstacle, especially in these days of increasingly good relations between the two Koreas and two Germanys.

Moreover, as almost everyone except South Vietnamese government members clearly recollects, the DMZ was set up as a temporary demarcation line in the 1954 Geneva Accords ending the French Indochina war. The DMZ, in fact, was supposed to disappear thanks to elections which the Geneva Accords stipulated should reunit the country in 1956.

Observers here are less impressed by Kissinger's complaint about ever changing Hanoi demands than the American public which apparently is not aware that much of North Vietnam's manueuvering has been dictated by radical new demands introduced by the United States in November on Saigon's behalf.

If rumors attributed to other members of Kissinger's negotiating team here are to be believed, the Americans are already looking for a scapement. And the rumors about State Department displeasure with Kissinger's "talented amateur" negotiations in early October is making the rounds of the Paris cocktail-diplomatic circuit.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 19 DECEMBER 1972

U.S. renews bombing

By Courtney R. Sheldon

Staff correspondent of

The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

U.S. resumption of bombing and mining above the 20th parallel in North Vietnam is by itself a bleak assessment on the outlook for peace soon.

It follows Henry A. Kissinger's report that Hanoi was raising "frivolous" questions at peace negotiations and reversing itself on points of substance agreed to earlier.

It is apparently the White House feeling that the halting of the bombing of the Hanoi-Haiphong region about Oct. 22 gave North Vietnam the luxury of delaying serious bargaining.

When questioned about the timing of the renewed bombing and mining, press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler said the U.S. policy was that stated by the President on May 8 when he first ordered it just before the Moscow summit.

At that time he said, "Once prisoners of war are released, once the internationally supervised cease-fire has begun, we will stop all acts of force throughout Indo-China."

Mr. Ziegler said that the reversion to the May 8 policy was "to cope with another enemy buildup" and even "a possible Communist offensive."

The United States has known about the enemy buildup for several months. Dr. Kissinger said he knew of it on Oct. 26 when he declared that "peace is at hand."

On Oct. 26 Dr. Kissinger said the May 8 policy had been amended; "we have restricted our bombing, in effect, to the battle area in order to show our goodwill, and to indicate that we are working within the framework of the existing agreement," he said.

The "existing agreement" Dr. Kissinger referred to was the draft of the peace settlement which looked so promising to him on Oct. 26.

U.S. bombing did continue in North Vietnam south of the 20th parallel, and some of it has been the heaviest of the war.

There have been reports that between late October and mid-December the U.S. permitted the North Vietnamese to clear some of

(CONTINUED NEXT PAGE)

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# Did U.S. change the tune in Paris talks?

By Charlotte Saikowski

Washington

While the United States accuses Hanoi of frustrating a Vietnam peace settlement, the Vietnamese Communists are adamantly laying the blame at the door of Washington. Reading the original October agreement, some analysts here see justification in the Communist charge.

The North Vietnamese reacted sharply to Dr. Henry A. Kissinger's background briefing on the peace negotiations, calling it a distortion. Nguyen Thanh Le, a spokesman for the Hanoi delegation in Paris, said the United States had sought substantive changes in the draft accord made public Oct. 26 and not Hanoi, as Dr. Kissinger stated Saturday.

Mr. Le emphasized that the Hanoi reaction was preliminary, and that Hanoi's negotiators had not yet seen a full official transcript of Dr. Kissinger's press conference.

## Withdrawal question

Communist pronouncements on the eve of the Kissinger news conference had indicated the North Vietnamese position that, one, the United States is raising basic issues that cut to the core of the October accord and, two, that these are totally unacceptable.

Specifically, a statement broadcast by the Provisional Revolutionary Government (Viet Cong) on Dec. 15, without reneging on the Kissinger-Luc De Tho agreement not to divulge the substance of the Paris talks, charges that the United States and the Thieu government are:

1. Bringing up the question of the withdrawal of the North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam as a "basic condition for a peace settlement." This, it says, is a scheme to destroy the Communists while the U.S. tries to beef up the Thieu regime, and the Vietnamese people "ilately reject" it.

2. Calling for a restoration of the demilitarized zone with the aim of turning it into a permanent boundary and in effect making South Vietnam a separate country. Under the 1954 Geneva Agreement, the statement notes, the DMZ is a provisional line and not a territorial or political boundary, and the effort to make it one violates the Vietnamese people's aspiration for reunification.

3. Insisting on the "right of self-determination" in a way contrary to the October agreement — by trying to deny that there now are two political governments and two armies in South Vietnam and to impose an "unlawful administration" in the South.

Points two and three of the statement seem to dovetail with Washington's reported demand that Hanoi recognize Saigon's "sovereignty" over all South-Vietnam.

Significantly, perhaps, say analysts, the Viet Cong statement for the first time employs a formula of blaming both the United States and President Thieu of impeding a settlement. Previously, only the South Vietnamese leader was accused of being the stumbling block.

Although Hanoi has not reiterated this formula, it has supported the three-pronged Viet Cong charges. On Dec. 17, the North Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan ran an editorial welcoming the statement, reaffirming that Vietnam has always been one country and that President Thieu's claim of two Vietnams flouts the 1954 Geneva accords.

The demand for a DMZ, the Hanoi editorial

## THE OFFICER
### Borda Discusses AFR Future

One of the features of the Fall Meeting was the AF Section luncheon speech by the Hon. Richard J. Borda, Assistant Secretary of the AF (Manpower & Reserve).

He first reviewed the active duty situation, both as to hardware and people, stressing the problem in relation to this "period of intense pressures on the (national) budget".

In discussing the Reserve forces Mr. Borda pointed out that in the last three years 75% of the AFR in flying units were either in the process of converting aircraft or were newly-established units, thus causing intense personnel turbulence. He indicated this situation would continue for the next several years, though to a lesser degree, as modernization efforts continue.

Also stressed were the problems of the Reserve ability to man their forces in an all-volunteer environment, discussing the many factors our ROA leadership has been considering over the past years—the various incentives, realignment of Reserve recruiting systems and the like.

Sec. Borda concluded his remarks by emphasizing:

> "Given the perspective of today's environment I'd like to pass on to you my thoughts on what I think is the most fundamental and the most critical challenge that faces us today. That challenge is the realignment of thinking, or perhaps better stated, the putting into perspective

goes on, is an "absurd and arrogant demand," since this was not a permanent boundary. As for the issue of "self-determination," the demands being made are a "negation of the realities of South Vietnam."

In trying to assess North Vietnamese thinking, analysts suggest that Washington has indeed altered its original positions. They note that the accord reached in October was deliberately ambiguous and represented a compromise on both sides. Thus, the United States agreed not to guarantee a political settlement, which is something Hanoi had been demanding. Under the accord, this was to be worked out by the Vietnamese parties themselves.

### Picture left vague

In return, the military side of the picture was likewise left vague, with no indication of specifics on a cease-fire or indications of how long it would last. Written into the October agreement was the broad principle that there would be talks on a mutual withdrawal and demobilization. Conceivably, Hanoi also agreed tacitly to pull out some troops as a sign of good faith.

Implicit in the accord therefore was an option for the Communists to renew the military struggle if a political solution did not work out. In other words, the North Vietnamese, since they did not get the desired political solution, i.e. a coalition government, agreed to a vague cease-fire-in-place that would enable them to keep their troops in the South as a guarantee.

Now, these analysts note, Mr. Kissinger is trying to batten down a cease-fire, that is, to

of what the military in this country is all about.

> "Over the past few years we have witnessed a growing lack of appreciation of the role of the military in our society. While I recognize that historically the military has had its ups and downs, I do not believe our present situation compares with those preceding.

> "What we are experiencing today is a totally unjustified and dangerously malicious condemnation of our military. Much of this stems from the Vietnam war, which, ironically, relates directly back to decisions made and directions issued by civilian leadership, not military.

> "Of no small interest is the fact that in this process the issue of national security has been almost completely obscured. Rather, we have entered into a period where self-flagellation has become the order of the day. Where the cry for a reordering of priorities has either completely forgotten or conveniently ignored that which is this country's first priority—its national security.

> "If this requirement, our nation's security, is allowed to be downgraded, the whole issue of national priorities will become moot. For our first priority at that point in time will not be the environment, inflation, unemployment or whatever have you—our only priority will be survival.

> "The continuation of this nation as a viable leader in the free world rests squarely on our ability to provide a realistic deterrent to those who might seek to impose their will upon us or other nations of the free world."

### KISSINGER...CONTINUES

year will bring, not the release of energies into constructive fields, but a renewal of that grim struggle between President and Congress, between the weary critics and the dogged if disillusioned defenders of the Kissinger-Nixon policy of Vietnamization.

Three times — in 1964, 1968 and 1972 — the American people have voted for the man who promised to avoid or to end the struggle in Vietnam. Each time, the returns have been registered but the mandate has not been enacted. The war goes on.

If it is, indeed, to be that way again, it is not. only Kissinger who is in despair. The curse of which he spoke is shared by this capital and this country.

Could Vietnam still be an issue in our bicentennial year? The thought is unbearable.

separate the political and military issues — an effort that has caused difficulties throughout the war and apparently is a major problem holding up the peace settlement.

Similarly, the original accord implied that there were two governments and two Vietnamis in the South. If Washington and President Thieu now insist that Hanoi recognize Saigon's "sovereignty" over the whole of the South, this would seem to run counter to the intent of that accord.

These, in any event, are what North Vietnam indicates are the thorny issues strewing the lengthening road to peace.

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