on (left),
scholarship
to winners

before the fund's 12th annual banquet last night at the Sheraton Plaza. From left are Linda Jamgochian, Judy Caplitz and Michael Nash.

(Globe photo by Ellis Herwig)

## for two Rte. 2 shootings

Two men were killed in a car accident, MDC state, on Bel-bridge conjunction for a three-year-old, possibly a raggs wrap-the license

of Mary-
gton, was
resh Pond
onday with
ary, their
his mother-
Mary Mc-

One bullet grazed DeSantis' skull and several struck him in the left shoulder. He was released Saturday from Symmes Hospital in Arlington.

Authorities have been unable to establish any connection between the two victims that would link the two shootings.

"One man (Costas) was in business with his brothers in an electrical firm in Boston, the other (DeSantis) drives for a Malden trucking firm," Lt. Nally said.

Sgt. Peter Lucarelli of the MDC Police said, "There

Santis shooting occurred about 11:40 p.m. Friday just west of the Belmont Hill on-ramp in the westbound lane, Nally said, a car that had been directly behind the suspect's vehicle passed it and DeSantis's truck.

"The driver of that car should have had an excellent view of the suspect," Nally said. "We urge him to call either the State or MDC Police with any information he may have. His identity of course will be held in strict confidence."

The funeral service for DeSantis will be held at 1

# Between Issues

THE PRESSES began to roll with this issue of THE NEW LEADER on Wednesday, November 1, less than 24 hours after the passing of Hanoi's deadline for signing the Vietnam cease-fire agreement hammered out by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. Hans J. Morgenstau's analysis of the settlement and assessment of the factors delaying its formal acceptance arrived Monday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the deadline. It was not locked up in pages until the evening of the designated day itself.

That is about as close as a magazine can come to getting on top of an important development demanding attention even though it is subject to further change, so it is all the more frustrating that in this technological age the delivery system for paper missiles remains woefully inadequate. The printer willing, the binder willing, the man who affixes your address label willing (and to tell the truth, none of them really cares), properly sorted, sacked finished copies should be in the Post Office Friday. Since the U.S. Postal Service is not only unwilling but seems to have accomplished nothing with its recently won independence beyond immunity from pressure for greater efficiency, there is no controlling what may happen next. Prior to zip codes and much touted computerization, subscribers received their issues Saturday, Monday or the latest Tuesday (in other words, you would be reading this November 4, 6 or 7); now the same trip somehow takes one to three weeks, with luck, while mail costs continue to rise in inverse proportion.

Morgenthau, however, is not one to be easily defeated by a deteriorating bureaucracy. A long-time contributor to these pages and Leonard Davis Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, he examines the ramifications of the nine-point agreement for ending the Vietnam war in a way that will surely prove valuable whatever the course of events in the coming days. "Besides," Morgenthau assured us, "Henry says he is a friend of mine, so he certainly shouldn't do anything to outdate my article before it reaches the readers." "Kissinger's Next Test" begins on page 5.

OUR COVER drawing of the high-flying WWhite House special adviser on national security matters is by Bill Negron.

THE NEW LEADER: Published biweekly—except twice in July and once in August—by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs Inc. Editorial and executive offices: 212 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. Telephone 889-6316. (Postmaster: Please send change of address on form 3579 to THE NEW LEADER, 212 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. National distributors: Eastern News Company, 155 West 15th St., New York, N.Y. 10011. Indexed in the Public Affairs Information Service. Price this issue: 50 cents. Subscription $10 a year, Canadian $11, foreign $12. Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y. Copyright © 1972 by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission prohibited.

## THE New Leader

NOVEMBER 13, 1972
VOLUME LV, NUMBER 22

<table><tr><td>Correspondents' Correspondence</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Israel's Ombudsman/ELIAHU SALPETER</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Autumn in Vermont/EUGENE L. MEYER</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Kissinger's Next Test/HANS J. MORGENTHAU</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Prospects for a New Europe/JOHN MANDER</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Keeping Thailand Off Balance/ARNOLD ABRAMS</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Memoirs of a McGovern Canvasser/ RICHARD J. MARGOLIS</td><td>12</td></tr></table>

### Writers & Writing

<table><tr><td>Understanding the Past/PEARL K. BELL</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>Asia in the Raw/GEORGE WOODCOCK</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>The Union as Scapegoat/THOMAS R. BROOKS</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td>On Screen/JOHN SIMON</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>On Art/VIVIEN RAYNOR</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>On Stage/HENRY POPKIN</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>Dear Editor</td><td>25</td></tr></table>

Executive Editor: MYRON KOLATCH

Associate Editor: CHARLES CREESY

Assistant Editor: BARRY GEWEN

Assistant to the Editor: JOSEPHINE P. MEGRATH

Art Director: Herb Lubalin. Regular Critics—Literature:

Pearl K. Bell; Kingsley Shorter, Isa Kapp. Film: John Simon.

Television: Marvin Kitman. Art: James R. Mellow.

Regular Contributors—Daniel Bell, Theodore Draper,

Milton R. Konvitz, Irving Kristol, Robert Lekachman,

John P. Roche. Regular Columnists—Andrew J. Glass,

Walter Goodman, Richard J. Margolis.

Signed contributions do not necessarily represent the views of The New Leader. We welcome a variety of opinions consistent with our democratic policy. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

2

The New Leader

BETWEEN HANOI
AND SAIGON

# Kissinger's
Next Test

BYHANS J. MORGE NTHAU

NGUYEN VAN THIEU

THE FUNDAMENTAL issue that drew the United States into Vietnam and kept it there for almost 20 years was the prevention of a Communist victory in South Vietnam. We sought to achieve that end by creating and maintaining a non-Communist government in Saigon. When even our

massive military intervention did not assure the self-sufficiency of such a regime, we decided to leave the South Vietnamese to their own devices, provided our disengagement would not lead to, or at least would not look too obviously like, a Communist victory. That was the political meaning of the Vietnamization program.

Once the policy was decided upon, the central question for us was no longer primarily who was to govern in Saigon, but how conditions for a period of transition could be agreed upon which would allow us to disengage without appearing to have been defeated. The real issue was no longer victory but a decent interval between our departure and a Communist takeover, if such should be the result of our going home. Indeed, this was the position Henry Kissinger took as far back as 1968, before he became the White House adviser on national security matters.

What President Nixon has been trying to do since 1969, and what has transpired in recent weeks about the conditions and prospects of a

peace settlement in Vietnam, must be seen in the context of this new policy. We wanted to leave, regardless of the long-range political consequences for South Vietnam; but, figuratively speaking, we did not want the first Communist soldiers to enter Saigon as the last American ones were on their way out.

Standing in the way of a negotiated settlement that would satisfy this basic American policy was, on the one hand, the incompatibility of our objective with the interest of the Saigon government in its survival and, on the other, the suspicion of the Communists that they would again be cheated out of a victory they saw in their grasp. Thus South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu had to oppose a settlement, Hanoi had to tilt it in favor of a quick Communist takeover, and we had to postpone that outcome if we could not prevent it. Reconciling these three contradictory and, insiginfar as American-South Vietnamese relations are concerned, incompatible positions in a negotiated settlement was the very difficult task history assigned to Kissinger. It is a

November 13, 1972

5

tribute to his ability that, although at the moment of this writing he has not solved the problem, he has been able to go as far as he has.

The new U.S. policy, it should be noted, could not have succeeded without the tacit support of the Soviet Union and China; for as long as the two major Communist powers favored North Vietnam's direct assumption of power in South Vietnam, Hanoi could afford to continue to insist upon a simultaneous military and political settlement, with the removal of Thieu as an indispensable precondition. The United States obviously exacted a price from the Soviet Union and China for the normalization of relations, especially in the field of trade: their unspoken approval of, or at most low-keyed opposition to, the American policy of disengagement. It is clear from North Vietnam's critical statements, and especially from Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin's backing the reopening of negotiations in the face of Hanoi's opposition, that this price is being paid.

What we know at present is that North Vietnam and the United States have drawn up a compromise settlement, in the sense that both sides have conceded points they formerly insisted upon. North Vietnam has accepted the separation of the military from the political arrangements and, more specifically, has resigned itself to the continuation of the Thieu regime for the time being. The United States has agreed to a system of tripartite commissions which, while not performing the functions of a coalition government demanded by the other side, would have the administrative roles of supervising compliance with the ceasefire, preparing a new constitution, and organizing elections. Since the commissions' decisions must be unanimous, they are not likely to decide much. Most importantly, however, the United States has consented to a temporary division of South Vietnam by allowing approximately 150,000 North Vietnamese

troops to continue in control of the South Vietnamese territories they occupy now.

THE DIVERGENT receptions these provisions have received from the three parties concerned are indicative both of their conflicting interests and of the inherent ambiguities of the agreement. Saigon is particularly opposed to the North's troops staying where they are because this denies its sovereignty over part of the territory it has always claimed and, as we shall see in a moment, jeopardizes its sovereignty over the territory it still controls. Hanoi maintains that the agreement is final as it stands, and has urged that it be speedily signed

and put into effect. The United States, anxious to placate Saigon, has requested another negotiating meeting of several days' duration in order to clean up what it has called "just a few matters to be made crystal clear" and "linguistic problems."

Whatever the settlement as it stands at the moment will do, it is virtually certain to doom the Thieu regime. Thieu came to power and has kept himself in power by virtue of American support, and of the consequent loyalty this has earned him from his Army. Barely able to win his first election under laws rigged blatantly in his favor, he felt constrained to transform the second election into a plebiscite that eliminated all competition. If there

should ever be elections in South Vietnam resembling anything we call by that name—a very open question —Thieu would have no chance of winning.

Furthermore—and here we have the crucial issue—Thieu has been able to hold his own militarily only because of massive U.S. power from the air. Even those observers who are most enthusiastic about the success of Vietnamization do not contend that the South Vietnamese Army could have blunted the North Vietnamese attacks without this. Since a cease-fire-in-place in a guerrilla war staggers the imagination, the political future of South Vietnam will probably be decided not in the polling booth but on the same hamlet and jungle battlefields where it has been fought over for almost 30 years. Lacking American support, Thieu, who hardly managed to prevail when he had it, is bound to lose that battle.

Hanoi, meanwhile, is of course aware that renegotiation of the agreement, far from being limited to minor changes, will involve the substance of the understanding insofar as it affects the future of the Thieu regime. In other words, renegotiation can only seek to tilt the balance of the future, now shifted toward the North, in the South's direction. It is not surprising, therefore, that Hanoi has called the request for renegotiation "a very serious situation, which threatens to jeopardize the signing of the agreement."

The United States is in the awkward position of having to allay the fears of both Saigon and Hanoi. It cannot very well provide Thieu with a serious chance to survive without endangering peace with Hanoi. Yet it can use its military power to wring from the hands of Hanoi, encouraged by neither Moscow nor Peking, some additional concessions that will not save Thieu but will make it easier for him and us to depart. This appears to be the next test of Kissinger's statesmanship.

6

The New Leader

THE NEW REPUBLIC 11 November 1972 (8)

# Vietnam Hanging Fire

These are days of suspense for anyone who is starved for peace, and even for someone like President Thieu who is not. What seemed to be a satisfying agreement on Vietnam was no sooner put on the table than it was removed: it was not quite done, it needed a few more hours in the oven. Mr. Kissinger acknowledged that there had been a meeting of minds in Paris on the assumption that Washington and Hanoi spoke for their respective partners. That proved true of Hanoi, but the delay in signing an accord suggests it was not true for Washington, which last week was still trying to get its Saigon ducks in a row. Whatever may be served up, Thieu says he won't have it and he defies Washington to force-feed him. The blustering in Saigon is distracting but need not be conclusive. Thieu may block a quick political settlement with the NLF, but he could not block a determination by the US and Hanoi that US forces and American POWs will leave Vietnam within 60 days after an accord is signed. And Thieu can't for long run a war on his own; without the US, which provides air support, military supplies, food and the salaries of his army and his police, he is only one of many Vietnamese politicians, indeed less than some of them. Moreover, it is not only the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese who say there can be no peace while Thieu is in charge; that is the view of a large number of non-Communists in the South, many of whom Thieu has jailed because it is their view. What now remains to be seen, therefore, is whether the White House has at last decided to subordinate the interests of Thieu to the interests of the US, and will no longer shore up a regime whose own narrow foundation could never support it. The postponements and the Pentagon's rush delivery of military supplies in recent weeks cast some doubt on whether that question has yet been answered in the affirmative.

Mr. Kissinger has made much of the claim that the breakthrough in negotiations came on October 8 when, for the first time, the North was willing to separate military from political issues. There has been some shift in Hanoi's position, but the separation is not clear-cut, and it occurred before October 8; it was present in the NLF's seven-point program put forward in Paris on July 1, 1971 and subsequently endorsed by Hanoi and by Peking. The NLF proposed at that time that all US and allied prisoners of war be released by the end of 1971, contingent on the withdrawal of US forces by that date, and that a cease-fire go into effect "as soon as the parties reach an agreement" on withdrawal. Five days later, a North Vietnamese official added that the offer to return the POWs did not depend on a political settlement in South Vietnam, which would be left to the NLF and the Saigon government to work out later. All these points are roughly paralleled in the terms outlined by Mr. Kissinger on October 26.

The July 1971 Vietcong formula did pose the condition that the US "cease backing the bellicose group headed by Nguyen Van Thieu... and stop all maneuvers, including tricks in elections, aimed at maintaining" Thieu in power. That condition was tailored to Hanoi's hope that Mr. Nixon would make use of South Vietnam's October 1971 elections to disengage honorably from the war, consistent with his repeated commitment to Vietnamese self-determination. A year ago he could have permitted, if not quietly encouraged, the Vietnamese people to displace Thieu through elections whose relative honesty only the US could ensure. That way out was rejected in Washington; and of course it was rejected by Thieu, who turned his propa-

ganda and police loose on his opponents and ended up as the only presidential candidate.

There is nothing new either in the current pledge by both sides to try to avoid a "bloodbath." The Communists have long been preoccupied with this danger, for it has been their belief that, following a cease-fire, the NLF has most to fear from political retaliation. This possibility occupied a particularly salient position (2B) in their proposal of July 1971, the first sentence of which called on the parties "to take concrete measures with the required guarantees so as to prohibit all acts of terror, reprisal and discrimination against persons having collaborated with one or the other party." Similarly, the willingness to work out means whereby neither the NLF nor the Saigon regime could dominate any transitional, tripartite administration in the South is not something born of Mr. Kissinger's recent round of secret talks. NLF leaders have as much reason to worry about potential Saigon domination of a transitional authority as Mr. Thieu has reason to fear its domination by the Communists.

But it is precisely the composition, duties and powers of this interim "administration structure" in the South (to be called a Council of National Reconciliation and Concord) which are left ambiguous in the current plan, and it is an ambiguity which presumably worries Thieu. It ought also to worry Thieu's opponents. For as described by Mr. Kissinger, the "administrative structure" (we must not use the word "coalition") that somehow will come into being following the cease-fire, would have on it representatives of Thieu, the NLF and the "neutralists" (half of them appointed by Thieu, half by the NLF), but it is given only advisory authority. All its "decisions" must be unanimous, which would seem to assure its impotence. It would have no troops at its disposal, no effective right to adjudicate between competing claims. Furthermore, nothing in the Hanoi-Washington agreement as publicized would instruct Thieu to set free non-Communist, anti-Thieu politicians whose presence in any three-tier "administrative structure" could be vital. Real power would remain with those who exercise military control in this or that hamlet or province. North Vietnamese troops would not be obliged to pull back (though Mr. Kissinger hopes for at least token withdrawal), and Thieu makes quite a point of this, though the military-police forces of the Saigon government are incontestably greater in numbers and equipment. Secretary Laird said last week that they "are in a very good position," whereas the widely dispersed North Vietnamese are "vulnerable."

The vague, veto-ridden Council of Reconciliation and Concord is to have responsibility (along with two sets of military commissions!) for supervising the cease-fire, and is to plan (if that is the right word) for new elections. What this might mean in practice is not apparent. For, to repeat, the tentative accords provide that the political future of the South is to be decided not by any such tripartite council, but by consultation between the present Saigon government and the National Liberation Front. If they are not able to agree, they may resume the fighting, but meanwhile the American military and prisoners of war would have got out of their way.

Now, this is not exactly how the White House has described the situation, and we do not say that in any

CONTINUED PAGE 4-E

3-E

# Some Important Lessons

AVIATION WEEK

6 November 1972 (8)

Both sides in the Vietnam war are jockeying for better field position as the prospects of a truce and cease-fire improve. Both sides are pouring in military equipment and supplies to bolster their forces against an inevitable supply freeze by a truce. Both sides are fighting many minor actions designed to stake out territorial claims that can be validated by the cease-fire stalemate. But whatever happens around the conference table in Paris or on the battle-torn ground of Indochina, it will only be a truce and a pause in the continuing struggle to determine who will rule South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Whatever happens during this truce, there are several important lessons that the American people should learn from what has transpired on the battlefields of Southeast Asia during the past seven months.

Among them are:

* Superior military power can be decisive when it is applied effectively with sufficient determination to achieve its goals. Years of professorial operational analysis by top-level civilians in the Pentagon purportedly proved that the North Vietnamese army could not be defeated on the battlefield nor could its supplies be reduced to a sufficiently small flow to slow the combat pace. But both objectives have been achieved in the last seven months by the determined and effective application of military force. The North Vietnamese divisions have been decisively defeated in most of their major engagements, stalemated in many more and have lost their capability to conduct sustained offensive operations on any significant scale.

* **Effective political-military relationships can be established** to bring the full force of diplomacy and firepower to bear on a single goal. While they were being beaten on the battlefield, the North Vietnamese were being outmaneuvered on the diplomatic front to erode the full support of their strongest allies. The combination of military defeat and diplomatic disaster was crushing and stimulated the now almost hysterical demands for a cease-fire and truce.

* **It is possible to maintain civilian policy control** over the military forces without hamstringing the field commanders in achieving the goals set for them. During the Lyndon Johnson-Robert McNamara regime, the war was run in picayune detail from the White House where targets were selected and modes of attack determined even down to ordnance prescribed and permissible approach directions. The rules of engagements specified by these remote civilians even told combat pilots when they could fire on enemy aircraft in the air and when they couldn't. They prescribed many sanctuaries where the enemy could not be attacked under any circumstances. Almost every military action taken in that disgraceful period was done in a manner that convinced the Hanoi government that the U.S. was neither serious in its intentions nor determined to seek a decisive result.

During the last seven months' campaign, the polit-

ical directives to the military have been crystal clear, and the White House control has been tight and effective. But the methods of achieving the White House specified goals was left to the commanders in the field. They have achieved them in decisive fashion. More importantly, conduct of the battle has convinced Hanoi that the U.S. is indeed serious about throwing its forces out of South Vietnam and ending the war. There were few sanctuaries for military forces or supplies during the past seven months. The pressure was steady and relentless. It produced decisive results that had eluded far greater military forces committed with indecision and restrictions for many bloody years.

* **It is possible to train and equip Asian troops** to fight as well as anybody. We should have learned this lesson in the Pacific during World War 2, but in the euphoria of victory, the myth was revived that Oriental troops wouldn't fight. The Chinese troops that foreign observers sneered at in 1942-45 overwhelmed U.S. forces in Korea a decade later when properly led, fed and equipped. During that same Korean war, the Republic of Korea (ROK) troops were sneered-at weaklings of the United Nations' line. Many Communist attacks were aimed at a ROK division flank where both friend and foe knew they would break and run.

But a decade of proper training, adequate clothing and food, modern weapons and an officer corps selected by merit rather than social position or family wealth made a decisive difference. In South Vietnam, the 40,000 ROK troops have been a tremendously effective fighting force that the Hanoi regiments avoided whenever possible. The ROKs not only mauled the Hanoi regulars whenever they met them but also cleaned out the Viet Cong in the areas they controlled.

The South Vietnamese army still is in that early process of transition, with some well-trained units such as Rangers and Marines equal to anything Hanoi can throw against them. The rest of the army is slowly throwing off the shackles of its French-model social officer system and being equipped, fed, paid and led in a more effective manner.

If the process has sufficient time to mature, we would guess that the South Vietnamese troops would be as combat-effective as any in Asia. The fact is that the South Vietnamese army, as it is now, stood and fought the flower of the North Vietnamese army during the past seven months and did not break and run in any major encounter. It still stands between the Hanoi regulars and all their strategic objectives in the south.

These then are some of the important lessons to be learned from the last seven months in Southeast Asia. They are extremely important to the American people as a guide to wielding their very considerable power to achieve the goals of peace and stability they all so earnestly desire.

-Robert Hotz

## VIETNAM HANGING FIRE...Continued

critical spirit. Whatever the nature of the agreement reached, it must be seen to represent Mr. Nixon's "best hope for lasting peace," and so it must be loaded with Western gimmicks—two-power, four-power, three-tier, international monitors, custodians, guarantors. The gimmicks might work, but whether they do or don't, public relations requires that any coverup for US withdrawal be as concealing as the fig leaves in the Vatican museum. Once the US has departed, it is not likely to return; we would then face a new situation, one that's beyond our control. If the cease-fire or the anticipated political negotiations break down, we shall regret it, but we shall at least have the lesser satisfaction

of knowing that the Vietnamese on their own cannot tear themselves and their country apart with anything like American efficiency.

For this country, withdrawal promises release from a decade of brutalizing bondage; what has been wasted can never be recovered or justified. For the South Vietnamese, a cease-fire promises something safer than daily bombing. For the North, in the absence of a political settlement and in the absence of any agreement for the release of prisoners held in Thieu's jails, a cease-fire and withdrawal offer the hope that when the Americans have gone home, Thieu will fall and that his collapse will trigger a new alignment of political forces. It is not an unrealistic hope.

4-

CHICAGO DAILY NEWS 5 NOVEMBER 1972 (7)

# Long delay on peace in deals with Saigon,

By Peter Lisagor

Our Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON — Hard bargaining with both Hanoi and Saigon could delay a Vietnam peace settlement for weeks, according to informed sources here.

President Nixon and his top aides remain confident that the North Vietnamese, despite their harsh language in the formal talks in Paris, eventually will agree to new secret talks with presidential adviser and chief negotiator Henry Kissinger.

Those talks are not expected to occur until well after Tuesday's election. But if they occur soon, these informants believe, an agreement could be reached by the end of November.

HANOI'S suspicions that Mr. Nixon may be escalating his demands are described here as real.

But, although no one will discuss secret contacts between Washington and Hanoi since the breakthrough was announced last week, there are indications that the North Vietnamese are being told that the United States is not seeking to reopen the draft agreement to

NEW YORK TIMES 7 NOVEMBER 1972

# Thieu's Trump Card: of His Hand

By FLORA LEWIS
Special to The New York Times

PARIS, Nov. 6—The North Vietnamese have professed not to believe that the United States is seriously concerned about Saigon's objections to the cease-fire agreement negotiated by Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, Hanoi's representative.

But President Nguyen Van Thieu does, in fact, have a real trump to play. His power is precisely the power of weakness, of South Vietnam's dependence on the United States for the "chance of survival" that President Nixon and two Presidents before him pledged repeatedly.

As a former United States official who is a veteran of Vietnam policy planning put it, "The American public just doesn't realize the enormous leverage Thieu has, especially in the period just before our elections."

"The U.S. Government has an obsessive fear that if we push too hard, the whole thing can collapse on us," he said.

‘Peace With Honor’ at Stake

United States and Saigon officials that such a threat would probably boomerang on the United States by exploding an semblance of a "peace with honor."

If the war were to end in chaos and visible disintegration of the South Vietnamese Government, it would be hard for the United States to avoid the label of "surrender," which President Nixon has said he will never accept, and even harder to justify having kept the fighting going for so long.

That nightmare has haunted Washington policy officials ever since 1963, when the United States sanctioned the fall of South Vietnam. The aftermath of the coup against him was 18 months of revolving-door governments.

## Foe's Victory Was Near

The Saigon administration hold on South Vietnam was s gravely weakened that in less than two years, North Vietnam was within reach of a military victory. It took bombing of the North and eventually half a million American soldiers to prevent defeat.

It is not a situation the

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 7 NOVEMBER 1972

# Mr. Thieu's chances

By Joseph C. Harsch

There is, of course, a lot of fine print of tacit as well as written kind in the agreement hammered out between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. Not until we know all that is implied as well as written, and not until it has been put into operation, will it be possible to see clearly just what sort of a deal really has been made.

But it is justifiable to say that Mr. Kissinger has negotiated what appears to be a perfectly real chance for the survival of a non-Communist regime in Saigon.

## Decisive test

The conventional wisdom of Washington has long assumed that sooner or later the Communists will win out in Saigon and that the most Mr. Nixon was holding out for was a gradual transition to save the American face and cover up the extent of the defeat.

This may prove to be correct. The Thieu regime might collapse. President Thieu's real toughness and real political astuteness are about to be put to a decisive test. No one can know how well he and it will stand up to the test.

But there are great elements of strength in his position. His people have had a chance to defect to communism, and rejected it. There is no evidence of a massive preference for the men from Hanoi over the men now in power in Saigon. The South Vietnam Army is an experienced and well-trained military force. It is in control of all the main cities and of the road and rail lines which connect them. It will, under the agreement, continue to be resupplied from the United States.

## Reconstruction aid

The North Vietnamese main forces are supposed, under the agreement, to withdraw from Cambodia and Laos through which their supply lines now run. It is doubtful that sufficient supplies to support their full strength in the South can be moved directly from north to south. The trails went around the border, not directly down from North to South Vietnam.

There is to be American aid in the economic reconstruction of North Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson promised it long ago. Mr. Nixon will

honor that promise, provided of course that the North Vietnamese actually allow the non-Communist regime to survive in Saigon. Aid can be supplied or withdrawn according to Hanoi's behavior. Washington will retain both carrot and stick into the postwar period.

President Thieu is a realist. He and his people are expecting to remain in Saigon and in office and in power. They have not sent their clothes and money off to the French Riviera, as they would be doing if they thought they had been sold out by Washington to Hanoi. And they would be the first to sense such a sell-out. After all, their lives as well as their fortunes are at stake.

## A fair chance

Nothing Mr. Kissinger could write into the agreement can prevent the local Viet Cong from continuing a guerrilla war. But Mr. Kissinger has given Hanoi reasons for not supporting that effort aggressively. Can Mr. Thieu handle the local Viet Cong if the North Vietnamese regulars keep out of the fight or go home?

That is up to Mr. Thieu. He does have a fair chance.

®

OKLAHOMA CITY TIMES

OCTOBER 31, 1972

MONDAY NOVEMBER 6, 1972

Hanoi Cave-In Seen

OAKLAHOMA CITY TIMES 10/1/72

By Keyes Beech

SAIGON (CDN) — North Vietnam did more than blink when it reached an agreement with the United States to end the war. It caved in.

That, in the view of political analysts here, is the only way to read Hanoi's astonishing peace concessions after four years of bargaining during which the Communists refused to budge an inch.

WHETHER the Communists intend to live up to the agreement—assuming it is finally wrapped up—is quite another matter. Also, it would be a mistake to assume that Hanoi has surrendered its claim to the South.

Moreover, once a cease-fire goes into effect, there doubtless will be wholesale cheating by both the Saigon government and the Communists.

But as one longtime observer of the Vietnamese scene observed, "Better a cheating peace than a full-scale war."

MEASURED BY any yardstick, the United States and South Vietnam won a settlement that, in view of Hanoi's seemingly iron-willed inflexibility, would have been considered wildly optimistic less than a month ago.

In an amazing about face, Communist negotiators dropped every one of their major demands. The tortured language of the agreement, with its built-in face-saving devices, tends to obscure this.

Stripped to its essentials, what the agreement adds up to is this:

(1) HANOI abandoned its demand that a political settlement had to come before a cease-fire. Instead, it accepted the U.S. position that the shooting had to stop before political talks could begin.

(2) The Communists dropped their demand for a coalition government, which, in White House adviser Henry A. Kissinger's words, "would absorb all existing authority." They also abandoned their demand for a veto over the makeup of the existing Saigon government. In short, President Nguyen Van Thieu stays.

ship would be split 50-50 between Saigon and the Communists. Moreover, its decisions would have to be unanimous.

The net effect is that Saigon is committed to nothing, not even elections. The council could "urge" elections but it could not impose them, under the unanimity rule.

SUMMING UP, one analyst put it this way: "On the surface, you have two governments, one of them (Saigon) controls 44 provincial capitals, four out of 240 district capitals and about 97 per cent of the population."

"The Communists are left with some mountain tops, mangrove swamps and perhaps 3 per cent of the population."

Hidden away in the text of the agreement is a provision that would allow Hanoi to withdraw its forces in South Vietnam, in the unlikely event it should do so.

THIS CLAUSE provides for talks on mutual troop reductions in the South. It states that "excess" troops will be demobilized within three months after the effective date of the cease-fire.

What the text of the agreement doesn't say is that troop reductions will be on a one-to-one basis. This would clearly be to Saigon's advantage, since its forces in the South vastly outnumber North Vietnam's forces.

Why, after all these years, were the Communists so eager for a cease-fire on such clearly disad-

(3) THEY agreed to withdraw their forces from Laos and Cambodia and abandon their sanctuaries in those neighboring countries. This would mean an end to the Ho Chi Minh trail as an infiltration route, which seems too good to be true and probably is.

On paper, the agreement calls for what looks like a disguised coalition government in the form of an "administrative structure" called a "Council of National Reconciliation and National Concord" to work out arrangements for "free and democratic elections."

IN FACT, this body would amount to nothing more than an election commission. Its member-

vantageous terms?

ANALYSTS here give a combination of reasons, all of which add up to the conclusion that time was running out for Hanoi. While continuing to support Hanoi, both China and the Soviet Union were pressing the North Vietnamese to accept a compromise settlement.

The devastating bombing of North Vietnam, coupled with the mining of its harbors, hurt the Communists more than they cared to admit, according to this assessment.

BUT THE decisive factor, according to the analysts, was the failure of Hanoi's 1972 offensive. After getting off to a smashing start with the capture of Quang Tri, the Communist offensive had bogged down by May.

Hanoi's planned August offensive never got off the ground. Meanwhile, crack South Vietnamese airborne and marine troops—with considerable assistance from American B52s—had chewed up five of North Vietnam's best divisions.

To compound their woes, the North Vietnamese got little or no assistance from the Viet Cong, which has never recovered from the 1968 lunar new year offensive.

"AT THIS point," said a senior analyst, "Hanoi had no more cards to play. It was clear to them at least that President Nixon would be re-elected. If by some chance he was defeated, it would be on issues unrelated to Vietnam.

Washington Whispers®

*(Items appearing on this page are being talked about in Washington or other news centers)*

Why Hanoi Broke Truce Secrets . . . Flop of the Year: Red Offensive . . . McGovern's Money Woes Over?

Hanoi's cease-fire proposals to Henry Kissinger, the President's top adviser on national security, were dealt with in such secrecy that experts high up on the Kissinger staff had no idea of the details until he, himself, made them public on October 26. The fear was that the slightest leak could have blown up the whole deal.

Many officials in Washington, Saigon and Paris were caught completely by surprise when the North Vietnamese Communists suddenly took the wraps off delicate truce negotiations. One theory: The Reds thought their broadcasts of their terms might pressure the U. S. into a hasty settlement before everything was tucked in and all the seams stitched.

Within minutes after Henry Kissinger announced that a cease-fire was near at hand in Vietnam, the Price Commission was getting phone calls asking if controls will be dropped when the war ends. The answer: No.

Senior American officials agree with the South Vietnamese that the Communists' 7-month-old invasion was an utter flop. Not only did the enemy fail in a military sense, it was unable to come even close to any of the political goals it set to try to undermine the Saigon Government.

How much will it cost American taxpayers to "reconstruct" North and South Vietnam, if that decision is made? Between 2 and 3 billion dollars a year, according to estimates of some Government experts.

John D. Ehrlichman, presidential assistant for domestic affairs, is doing

everything he can to discourage Washington talk that he might be Richard Nixon's next Attorney General. Mr. Ehrlichman tells friends he takes the same attitude toward that job that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman took toward the Presidency. The General stopped a Sherman boomlet nearly a century ago by saying if nominated he would not run and if elected he would not serve.

Democratic National Chairwoman Jean Westwood is ready to fight to remain at that post after the election, friends say, even if Senator McGovern is defeated. Mrs. Westwood is almost certain to face a critical vote of confidence on December 9 in National Committee meeting.

Senator George McGovern's strategists have settled now on a 25-million-dollar campaign-spending figure, and say that they fully expect to wind up debt free.

Colleagues of Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., the former Kissinger aide who was vaulted into the Army's No. 2 job, point out that descriptions of the General as a man "long on staff work, short on combat" are inaccurate. General Haig's battlefield service earned him the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for combat; the Silver Star twice, the Distinguished Flying Cross three times, the Bronze Star twice and the Air Medal 28 times.

Some supporters of Republican Senator John Tower of Texas charge that Democrat John Connally is deliberately trying to torpedo the Senator's re-election and thus leave a vacuum at the top of the State's Re-

publican Party, should Mr. Connal decide to switch parties after November 7. Mr. Connally, so far, has n encouraged speculation that he may become a registered Republican before the 1976 presidential election.

A top corporation executive is telling his associates: "I've given up trying to predict what will happen to the wage-price control program—any when. Surprise is essential to any program of this sort. Officials would be foolish to tip their hands in advance. You have to keep that in mind interpreting what they say or do say about the future."

White House aides are passing the word that as price controls come an end, price supports on farm products may be lowered as a means restraining food costs. Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz is described fighting such action—but as unlikely to prevent the move once the election is over.

Strong sentiment of many business leaders to continue wage-price controls beyond next April 30's expiration date is irritating President Nixon economic advisers. Said one: "If many businessmen would rather that the Government did the job for them in keeping wages in line than start up to unions themselves."

Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, the fluential editor of the Cairo daily 'Ahram' and a confidant of Egypt President Sadat, claims that the control of maintaining Egypt's armed forces at their present levels is equal to the task of building and tearing down great Aswan Dam on the Nile or a year.

8

U. S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Nov. 6, 1

BostonGlobe 11/2/72

# Hanoi reported ready for more talks with US

By Jean Thoraval
Agence France-Presse

HANOI — The North Vietnamese government would not be opposed to a further meeting between its special negotiator, Le Duc Tho, and American presidential adviser Henry Kissinger, sources said here yesterday.

"Whether there is another meeting or not is not important. What is important is that the United States keeps its word," the sources said.

They did not hide the fact that they felt North Vietnam will now have to agree to a new secret contact with the Americans. Only a few days ago, Hanoi believed that the four years of hoggling in Paris, climaxed by the four-day talks in mid-October, had finally borne fruit, and that a cease-fire agreement had been concluded.

"They really take the Vietnamese people for children who run after a shadow that they can never catch," the sources said.

LE DUC THO
... further meetings?

They rebutted some of the reasons put forward by Kissinger and the White House for holding another secret meeting. The "minor" differences between the two sides were problems of translation between English and Vietnamese, notably on the role of the national council for reconciliation and concord, the sources said. They pointed out that Kissinger had his own interpreter with him for the most recent contacts.

As for American references to remaining difficulties raised by South Vietnam, and to demands from President Nguyen Van Thieu that his government play an active part in deciding peace terms most affecting South Vietnam, sources here referred to a speech by Kissinger last Feb. 9.

The presidential adviser said at that time that all the secret negotiations he had held with North Vietnamese representatives had been accompanied by full consultations with Thieu, and that Washington and Saigon were in complete agreement on each proposal put forward.

The sources also quoted a statement made by President Nixon at a news conference on Feb. 10: "Every proposal we have made in Paris has been a joint proposal by the government of South Vietnam and the government of the United States."

"I can say that any future proposals we make will be joint proposals of the government of South Vietnam and the government of the United States," the President said.

Because of these assurances, there is surprise here that the "two signatures for four parties" formula has been called into question.

"Thieu, in any case, does not have the right of veto over American policy," the sources said.

The fact that the cease-fire should have come into effect yesterday, in both North and South Vietnam, had the agreement been signed Tuesday - has not caused too much disilusion here.

For the moment, Hanoi is reacting calmly to the delay.

CHICAGO DAILY NEWS 2 November 1972 (3)

Phony cease-fire date
costly to North Viets

By Keyes Beech

Daily News Foreign Service

SAIGON — A phony cease-fire date exposed North Vietnamese troops to a merciless beating in the five critical provinces around Saigon, an on-the-spot survey disclosed Thursday.

North Vietnam troops were described by one U.S. adviser as "leaderless and confused" after a month-long land grab offensive that they were told would end in an in-place cease-fire Oct. 28.

In three firefighting during the last few days, U.S. advisers reported, enemy commanders have called out to South Vietnamese attackers:

"Hey, don't you fellows know there is supposed to be a cease-fire?"

THERE WAS near unanimous agreement in all five provinces that the delay in a cease-fire is working to the advantage of the Saigon govern-

Beech

ment, both militarily and politically. There also was agreement that if the South Vietnamese people had their way, the fighting would end now.

"Of course, the people have been disappointed before," said a crewcut young captain. "But never before have their expectations of peace been so high. They're actually making plans based on peace."

IN TWO of the most hotly contested provinces — Hainang and Bonh Duong — the enemy offensive appeared to be petering out although there was still some fierce fighting.

In Bonh Duong, for example, enemy forces hit 28 hamlets when they began their land-grabbing campaign in early October. Now they have been driven out of all but five.

"Most of the fighting is being done by our local forces while ARVN (South Vietnam's army) sits on its behind as usual," said a U.S. adviser.

THERE WAS an exception to this generalization. U.S. advisers reported the existence of an elite commando unit composed solely of picked officers, mostly airborne soldiers, who "lie in the boondocks all day watching the fighting through their binoculars."

"Then, at night they go to work," said one adviser. "The lead man goes in and disposes of the listening post by cutting the sentry's throat. Then the rest of them charge in with grenades and satchel charges blowing the hell out of enemy positions. They're the equivalent of the Communists' elite sapper teams."

"Have you ever seen an enemy soldier with his throat cut?" a senior American official said skeptically to a blond young major.

"Yes sir," replied the major.

ONE THING that seemed clear after a tour of the five provinces is that there wouldn't be a war in South Vietnam without North Vietnamese troops.

"Militarily, the Viet Cong simply aren't a threat any more and haven't been for a long time," a senior adviser said. "Every enemy unit we're up against is 75 to 100 per cent North Vietnamese, and even they seem to get younger and younger all the time."

South Vietnamese officials have taken full advantage of Communist exposure to round up hundreds of suspected Viet Cong or their sympathizers.

"Anybody who had a third cousin on the other side is suspect," said an American civilian.

WASHINGTON STAR &
NEWS 2 NOV 72 (3)

Push to Supply
Hanoi Troops
Held Seasonal

By HENRY S. BRADSHER
Star-News Staff Writer

SAIGON — "It's the normal pattern for this time of year — with the southwest monsoon ending, Hanoi is beginning to push men and supplies south again.

"It's a pattern for continued fighting. There's no lineup between those political moves for a cease-fire and what we're seeing in the field," an authoritative military source said, shaking his head.

"We can't see any sign of the Communists getting ready for peace. Maybe so—but if they were planning to keep the war going, they'd be doing exactly what they're doing now," the source said.

The flow of North Vietnam-
ese military supplies south-
ward normally slows to a
trickle during the June-Octo-
ber rainy period, then starts
up again as dry weather re-
turns.

Some reports have interpret-
ed the movements now as a

WASHINGTON STAR & NEWS 2 NOVEMBER 1972 (3)

Communists' Land Grab
Is Discounted by Pentagon

By ORR KELLY
Star-News Staff Writer

Communist forces in Indochina have not made a last-minute grab for territory in anticipation of a cease-fire, and this could be a genuine expression of good will on their part, a senior military officer at the Pentagon said today.

The officer said he and other
officials have been watching
carefully for such a move—
but it simply has not hap-
pened.

This assessment differs
markedly from some field re-
ports which portray both a
high level of military activity
and an attempt by the Com-
munists to acquire territory.

Even though there has
been a large number of in-
cidents reported each day,
most have been shellings
rather than attempts to take
ground.

In reports from Vietnam
today, for example, there
were 142 incidents through-
out the country in the previ-
ous period, but 103 of them
were just "attacks by fire,"
using mortars or artillery
rather than infantry. Rela-
tively little exchange of ter-
ritory reportedly took place,
though tanks were used in
capturing one border camp in
the Central Highlands

Helicopters were unable to lift out the wounded because of heavy antiaircraft fire from around the camp. After the rangers pulled out, U.S. and South Vietnamese planes continued to pound a hilltop held by the North Vietnamese just to the west of the camp.

"Many people have been ex-
pecting a big land grab and
now they have convinced
themselves that it is happen-
ing," the Pentagon officer
said. "But I don't see it. All
we see is little bitty incidents.
The situation is very quiet. I
have difficulty putting to-
gether a meaningful situation
report."

South Vietnamese government forces have also been cautious and reluctant to risk casualties as the time approaches when a cease-fire might go into effect, he said.

"I think the soldiers have decided to try to let the politicians work it out," he commented.

If the other side were seri-
ous about capturing territory,
he said, it would have begun to
concentrate its combat units,
but this has not happened.

This officer says a low level
of enemy activity and the ap-
parent lack of effort to gain
territory could be attributed to
an effort to achieve a worka-
ble cease-fire or to unwilling-
gess to suffer further heavy

ernment forces had driven en-
emy troops from a number of
hamlets ranging from 12 miles
northwest of Saigon to 20 miles
east of the capital. A commu-
nique reported 201 North Viet-
namese and Viet Cong and 15
South Vietnamese troops
killed, and 78 South Vietnam-
ese wounded.

The U.S. Command reported
that search teams had recover-
ed the bodies of 12 of the 22
Americans killed Tuesday
when a big U.S. helicopter
crashed into a flooded rice
field in the Mekong delta 35
miles southwest of Saigon.

The Pentagon analysis indi-
cates the North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong forces have
been hurt so badly it would
probably take months, per-
haps years, to get them back
into the shape they were in
when the offensive began.

The enemy as a whole is
probably back up to the man-
power level it had at the be-
ginning of the offensive, but it
is a force badly deficient in
training, experience, leader-
ship and equipment.

Relatively, the South Viet-
namese government forces are
in much better condition.
Their smaller manpower loss-
es have been replaced, new
equipment has poured in from
the United States and their
morale has been improved by

UPI-4

(CEASE-FIRE)

TOKYO--NORTH VIETNAM CLAIMED TODAY PRESIDENT NIXON LAST MONTH SENT ITS PREMIER TWO MESSAGES APPROVING A NINE-POINT VIETNAM PEACE AGREEMENT AND PROPOSED LAST TUESDAY -- WHICH CAME AND WENT WITHOUT A U.S. SIGNATURE -- AS THE DATE FOR SIGNING.

HANOI'S VIETNAM NEWS AGENCY (VNA) MONITORED IN TOKYO SAID NIXON SENT MESSAGES OCT. 20 AND OCT. 22 TO NORTH VIETNAMESE PREMIER PHAM VAN DONG AGREEING TO THE ACCORD AND PROPOSING OCT. 31 AS THEY DAY FOR SIGNING. THE RADIO SAID THE MESSAGES WERE RECEIVED WHILE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER HENRY A. KISSINGER, WHO WORKED OUT THE PACT EARLIER IN PRIVATE TALKS WITH HANOI DIPLOMATS, WAS DISCUSSING TERMS OF THE SETTLEMENT IN SAIGON WITH PRESIDENT NGUYEN VAN THIEU.

THE VNA STATEMENT ABOUT THE MESSAGES APPEARED IN A LENGTHY COMMENTARY ACCUSING NIXON OF USING THIEU TO STALL SETTLEMENT OF THE WAR.

"HOW CAN IT BE THAT THE U.S. PRESIDENT, WHILE SENDING HIS MESSAGES, WAS COMPLETELY IN THE DARK ABOUT THE TALKS MR. KISSINGER HAD IN SAIGON?" THE BROADCAST SAID. "YET NOW THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS THAT DUE TO DIFFICULTIES RAISED BY NGUYEN VAN THIEU, THERE MUST BE FURTHER NEGOTIATIONS. IS THERE ANYBODY WHO CAN ACCEPT SUCH A CONTENTION?"

THE UNITED STATES TODAY WAS REPORTED PRESSING HANOI FOR WITHDRAWAL OF ITS TROOPS FROM SOUTH VIETNAM AS PART OF THE PEACE PACT -- ALTHOUGH THAT CONDITION WAS NOT INCLUDED IN THE NINE-POINT SETTLEMENT REACHED BY WASHINGTON AND THE COMMUNISTS.

BUT RADIO HANOI IN A BROADCAST MONITORED WEDNESDAY IN SAIGON WARNED THAT ANY ATTEMPT TO ALTER THE TEXT THAT KISSINGER WORKED OUT "WORD BY WORD" WITH HANOI WOULD CRUSH CHANCES FOR A CEASE-FIRE. THE RADIO SAID UNLESS THE UNITED STATES "REFRAINS FROM ASKING FOR ALTERATIONS OF THE POINTS AGREED UPON, THE AGREEMENT CAN NEVER BE SIGNED TO END THE WAR AND RESTORE PEACE IN VIETNAM."

TODAY'S VNA BROADCAST SAID: "MR. KISSINGER ARRIVED IN SAIGON TO CONFER WITH NGUYEN VAN THIEU OCT. 18-22, 1972. IT WAS IN THE SAME PERIOD THAT PRESIDENT NIXON SENT TO THE DRVN (NORTH VIETNAM) PRIME MINISTER TWO MESSAGES, ONE DATED OCT. 20 AND THE OTHER OCT. 22, AFFIRMING THAT THE U.S. SIDE STILL CONSIDERED THE TEXT OF THE AGREEMENT TO BE COMPLETE, EXPRESSING HIS SATISFACTION AT THE EXPLANATIONS OF THE DRVN GOVERNMENT, AND PROPOSING OCT. 31, 1972, AS THE DATE FOR SIGNING."

VNA SAID WASHINGTON "HAS PRETEXTED DIFFICULTIES IN SAIGON IN AN EFFORT TO JUSTIFY ITS BAD FAITH. BUT THIS IS A FALSE PRETEXT THAT CANNOT STAND. IS THERE ANYBODY WHO DOES NOT KNOW THAT THE NGUYEN VAN THIEU PUPPET ADMINISTRATION IS AN INSTRUMENT OF U.S. AGGRESSION AND NEO-COLONIALISM IN SOUTH VIETNAM? THIEU OWES HIS EXISTENCE TO U.S. DOLLARS AND BOMBS. THIEU CANNOT SURVIVE IF HE DOES NOT RECEIVE U.S. BACKING. HE CANNOT ON HIS OWN OPPOSE THE POLICIES AND DECISIONS OF THE UNITED STATES."

-0-

SAIGON--NORTH VIETNAM'S LARGEST DAILY NEWSPAPER HAS URGED LAO DONG (WORKERS) PARTY MEMBERS TO KEEP ON FIGHTING IN INDOCHINA NOW THAT LAST TUESDAY'S DEADLINE FOR SIGNING OF A TRUCE AGREEMENT HAS PASSED.

"OUR PEOPLE HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE THAN TO CONTINUE TO FIGHT UNTIL COMPLETE VICTORY," SAID THE WEDNESDAY EDITORIAL IN NHANH DAN (PEOPLE'S DAILY) AND BROADCAST TODAY OVER HANOI RADIO. "NOTHING IS MORE VALUABLE THAN INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM. WE WOULD RATHER SACRIFICE EVERYTHING THAN LET OURSELVES BE SUBDUED."

11/2--GE830A

52

## BRITISH-CHINESE

I PEKING (AP)-SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME COMPLAINED TODAY THAT THE HANOI-WASHINGTON BLACKOUT ON INFORMATION RELATING TO THEIR DRAFT CEASE-FIRE LEFT BRITAIN AND CHINA UNABLE TO ASSESS THE NEXT STAGES IN THE PEACE-MAKING PROCESS IN INDOCHINA.

"NEITHER OF US HAS BEEN ASKED TO TAKE A PART IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OR IN THE SUPERVISORY MACHINERY," THE BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY TOLD REPORTERS.

"IF AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE WERE TO BE CALLED, BOTH OF US WOULD HAVE TO CONSIDER WHAT PART TO PLAY."

HOME MADE THE STATEMENT AT A NEWS CONFERENCE AT THE END OF A FIVE-DAY VISIT TO CHINA. HE SAID THE TWO COUNTRIES HAD EMBARKED ON A NEW RELATIONSHIP BASED ON AGREEMENTS TO WORK FOR IMMEDIATE PEACE IN INDOCHINA AND TO CONSULT CLOSELY ON OTHER WORLD PROBLEMS. I HOME SAID HE AND PREMIER CHOU EN-LAI, WITH WHOM HE CONFERRED FOR NEARLY THREE HOURS WEDNESDAY, SHARED THE VIEW THAT VIETNAM, LAOS AND CAMBODIA SHOULD IN ANY FINAL SETTLEMENT ASSUME THE STATUS OF NONALIGNMENT--FREE FROMTIES WITH ANY POWER BLOC.

I "WHILE VIEWS TAKEN BY EACH SIDE OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SITUATION DIFFER, WE ARE AGREED ON THE NEED TO RESTORE PEACE TO THE AREA WITHOUT DELAY AND TO KEEP IN TOUCH AS THE SITUATION DEVELOPS," HE ADDED.

AS FOR THE NEW RELATIONS WITH CHINA, HOME DECLARED: "THE ICE BETWEEN US HAD BEEN BROKEN BEFORE I CAME. NOW THE WATERS ARE WARM AND WE CAN SWIM IN THEM TOGETHER."

## PEKING--ADD BRITISH-CHINESE

HOME RESISTED EFFORTS BY QUESTIONERS TO FIND OUT PRECISELY HOW THE CHINESE VIEW THE CURRENT DELICATE VIETNAM PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, SAYING: "I'M NOT GOING TO PUT WORDS IN THE MOUTH OF CHINESE LEADERS--IT'S FOR THEM TO SAY."

HOWEVER, IT IS KNOWN THAT HE GOT A CLEAR IMPRESSION FROM CHOU AND FOREIGN MINISTER CHI PENG-FEI THAT:

I --CHINA FULLY BACKS THE STAND TAKEN BY HANOI ON OCT. 26 IN DEMANDING A SWIFT AMERICAN SIGNATURE OF THE CEASE-FIRE ACCORD.

--CHINA WILL CONTINUE TOTAL SUPPORT FOR HANOI IF THAT AGREEMENT BREAKS DOWN.

I --CHINA DOES NOT THINK MUCH OF THE IDEA OF A NEW GENEVA-TYPE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CONTEMPLATED IN THE DRAFT ACCORD.

IT WOULD PREFER INSTEAD TO HAVE ALL THE PROBLEMS OF CEASE-FIRE SUPERVISION, ELECTION IN SOUTH VIETNAM, AND ULTIMATE INDIVIDUAL SETTLEMENTS WORKED OUT BY THE VIETNAMESE, CAMBODIAN AND LAOTIAN PEOPLES THEMSELVES.

SR1144AES NOV 2

80

PARIS TALKS (TOPS 31)

PARIS (AP)-NORTH VIETNAM DECLARED TODAY THE UNITED STATES MUST UNDERTAKE TO SIGN A VIETNAM PEACE AGREEMENT BEFORE HANOI WILL CONSENT TO FURTHER DISCUSSIONS WITH HENRY KISSINGER.

THE STATEMENT WAS MADE BY NGUYEN THANH LE, SPOKESMAN FOR THE NORTH VIETNAMESE DELEGATION, AFTER THE DAY'S PEACE TALKS.

AT THE SESSION, THE UNITED STATES TOLD THE VIETNAMESE COMMUNISTS THAT THE FEW REMAINING PROBLEMS TO BE SETTLED BEFORE A CEASE-FIRE ACCORD IS REACHED "SHOULD NOT BE DISMISSED AS A PRETEXT FOR DELAY."

CR112P 2

RIS 17

HANOI REPORTS XUAN THUY NBC INTERVIEW

S921232 HANOI DOMESTIC SERVICE IN VIETNAMESE 1126 GMT 2 NOV 72 S

(TEXT) ON 1 NOVEMBER, IN AN INTERVIEW ACCORDED TO AN NBC CORRESPONDENT IN PARIS, COMRADE XUAN THUY, HEAD OF THE DRV DELEGATION TO THE PARIS CONFERENCE ON VIETNAM, EXPRESSED DOUBTS ABOUT THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE U.S. ATTITUDE IN NEGOTIATING A VIETNAM SOLUTION, AND CONDEMNED THE UNITED STATES FOR DEMANDING THAT THE AGREED-ON DRAFT CEASE-FIRE AGREEMENT BE CHANGED.

COMRADE XUAN THUY STRESSED: THE PROBLEM REGARDING A VIETNAM SOLUTION IS NOT MAJOR OR MINOR POINTS BUT A SERIOUS ATTITUDE IN THE TALKS.

COMRADE XUAN THUY ASKED: IF EACH TIME THIS AGREEMENT HAS BEEN AGREED ON IT IS THEN CHANGED, HOW CAN IT BE SIGNED AND THE WAR ENDED? HE ADDED: WE HAVE DISPLAYED OUR FLEXIBILITY, CONCESSION, AND GOOD WILL TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE.

2 NOV 1343Z AM/MA

Europe, p. 2 Asia, p. 10 Latin America, p. 17 Communist, p. 18

VIETNAM AGREEMENT: CONCERN ABOUT CONCESSIONS

Summary

Foreign media reported that the Administration "refuses to be rushed" and is "confident" that the Vietnam peace agreement will be signed at the appropriate moment.

At the same time, commentators in a number of countries expressed concern that the U.S. had made too many concessions and--some said--was aware of it.

While many believed that in the present unsettled situation a short delay would probably suit President Nixon and help President Thieu, the bulk of comment reflected various misgivings. These were typical:

-- The London *Daily Telegraph*, a supporter of U.S. Vietnam policy, reported today that "public rejoicing in America has been very short-lived. Misgivings are setting in." Yesterday it said Henry Kissinger "is very worried and far from sure he has not been booby-trapped."

-- Conservative *Muenchner Merkur* of Munich asserted that the cease-fire plan should make it "easier" for Hanoi "to imitate the pattern of Czechoslovakia..."

-- Moderately conservative *Figaro* of Paris said of negotiations on the proposed National Council for Reconciliation and Concord that "contrary to the impression that the White House wanted to give, it is not a simple matter of semantics."

-- The independent *Canberra Times* found it "incredible that President Nixon... should expect President Thieu to sign an agreement that guarantees to North Vietnam the right and means to interfere permanently in the internal affairs of South Vietnam."

Hanoi's *Nhan Dan* today charged the U.S. with "plotting to seek a military victory and gain a position of strength in the negotiations in an attempt to impose neocolonialism on the southern part of our country." Peking *People's Daily*, noting that the October 31 deadline had passed without the signing of the agreement, said the U.S. "must bear full responsibility for this complication."

*

*

*

No. 130

1

11/1/72

London: "U.S. More Confident Than Ever"

British media reported today that the U.S. "refuses to be rushed" and is "confident" that the Vietnam peace agreement will be signed at the appropriate time.

Commentators expressed some misgivings over the adequacy of guarantees for the South Vietnamese in the draft agreement.

The liberal _Guardian_ of Manchester and London reported this morning that "the Administration is more confident than ever that President Thieu will accept the agreement and that the North Vietnamese will not allow it to founder on a dispute over the timetable. Encouragement was gained from the Viet Cong statement in Paris that the agreement should be signed as soon as possible." The paper considered this "a step down" from their earlier insistence that it be signed yesterday. The paper added, "It was also noted that neither Moscow nor Peking was committing itself to a deadline."

"Misgivings Are Setting In"

The conservative _Daily Telegraph_, a consistent supporter of U.S. Vietnam policy, noted today that "White House officials took comfort from the fact that although the Communists made threatening noises they had left the door open for more talks between Dr. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho." However, the paper added, "public rejoicing in America has been very short-lived. Misgivings are setting in."

Yesterday the paper judged that 'Hanoi's move in prematurely revealing the terms of the cease-fire agreement... has landed the President in a serious fix... Despite all their brave talk in public about peace being at hand, high White House officials privately admit this... Among Republican campaigners and at the White House itself there is great concern about a backlash resulting from the feeling that, as one official put it, 'there has been just too much manipulation.'"

The paper asserted that Mr. Kissinger "is very worried and far from sure he has not been booby-trapped." It reasoned that when he "confirmed Hanoi's nine points, he was put in the position of endorsing them, even though he maintained that some important elements remained to be settled."

No. 130

2

11/1/72

"May Have Underestimated Difficulties"

The independent London *Financial Times* wrote yesterday that "in the light of the disagreement of the past few days, it appears that Dr. Kissinger may have been underestimating the difficulties which still stand in the way of a final agreement." It added, "But the delay--if indeed it is only a delay--is not working entirely to Mr. Nixon's disadvantage."

The independent *Times* of London reported today that Mr. Ziegler "appeared to be ruling out any remaining possibility of a cease-fire before the election," since President Nixon was "refusing to be stampeded by any deadline."

Anglo-Chinese Discussion of DRV Forces

Yesterday the paper ran a dispatch from Peking on Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home's current visit there, reporting that "both Britain and China feel that any future international conference on Vietnam should also discuss the problems of Laos and Cambodia." It said this feeling had emerged from a three-hour meeting between Sir Alec and Foreign Minister Chi Peng-fei. It added:

"One of the thorniest questions which the Anglo-Chinese talks have apparently not covered is whether North Viet- namese forces in South Vietnam are to be regarded as foreign and therefore should withdraw north of the DMZ. This is, in fact, the nub of the entire Vietnam problem as seen by the U.S., and Britain takes an understanding attitude towards the American position on it.

"However, if Dr. Kissinger... has not been able to get a firm guarantee from Hanoi on this point, there is little chance of Britain being able to raise it usefully in its talks with China, which says that the Vietnamese have the right to be in their own country."

BBC-TV: Disappointment for Voters?

On BBC radio last evening, correspondent Charles Wheeler remarked that the White House was under no discernible pressure to sign the peace agreement immediately, and said it would seem that a short delay would suit the President.

On a television news program he suggested that American voters might be disappointed when they learn more of the details of the draft peace settlement.

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West German TV: "No One Knows Voter Reaction"

A Washington correspondent of West Germany's second television network reported last night that State Department experts "had discovered more obscurities in the nine-point agreement than could be cleared up in a final round, but they hope that the Secretary of State will not have to sign something that may lead to new complications and more conferences....

"Nobody here expects a failure, but the number of those who would rather wait until November 7 has passed has not decreased because no one knows what the voters' re-action will be when it becomes clear that there is no more to gain now in Vietnam than there was four years ago."

Panelists on Tripartite Authority

In a weekly panel show on Sunday including foreign journalists accredited to Bonn, a French commentator called the terms of the draft accord "reasonable, although difficult to carry out...

"There are still two armies and much hatred and dangerous tendencies. But I think the three-part central authority in Saigon is the best solution for the pacification of Indochina..."

The West German moderator asserted that "two or three rival groups in an interim government hardly bodes well in the long run...."

"The neutralization of Vietnam will mean a Communist Vietnam in the long run. And that is the result the U.S. has tried for ten years to prevent."

"Thieu Trying to Gain Time"

The military affairs analyst of independent-right Frankfurter Allgemeine, presently in the U.S., predicted yesterday that the U.S. would sign the draft accord "even if President Thieu refuses to accept its terms." He said there was understanding in Washington for Mr. Thieu's position, but that Mr. Thieu's interests could not be permitted to "jeopardize" Mr. Nixon's re-election or the return of the POWs. He continued:

"In the view of Washington experts, Thieu's position is so strong that he need not fear the National Council at all."

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"He would run no risks, since ARVN and its leaders obey him unconditionally and the police are under his control....

"Theoretically at least, Thieu has a basis for political negotiations and a diplomatic settlement that is much better than that which existed in 1965 before the massive American engagement. Thus Thieu's reluctance to accept the terms of the cease-fire may be considered largely an attempt to gain time to recover more of the lost territory and to improve the military situation with the help of the USAF."

## "A People's Republic of Vietnam?"

A commentator in pro-Christian Democratic Muenchner Merkur of Munich wrote that the experience of the 1954 cease-fire suggested that the present cease-fire plan "and particularly the way it is to be overseen" should make it "easier" for Hanoi, through the National Council, "to imitate the pattern of Czechoslovakia by proclaiming in a year or two the establishment of a People's Republic of Vietnam....

"Thus it is understandable that Thieu opposes a hastily concluded cease-fire. The U.S. constantly has encouraged him with big promises. Now he is taking the U.S. at its word. We have a high opinion of this man who refuses to go down on his knees before a great power.... Of course, peace must be restored in Vietnam, but it should be a fair and safe peace which does not burden one side with concessions in advance."

## West Berlin: "No One Wants to Die Now"

Independent Tagesspiegel of West Berlin yesterday ran a report from its correspondent in Saigon that the Viet Cong were trying to expand the area under their control before the cease-fire became effective, but that ARVN "was reluctant to attack the Communist enemy because nobody wants to die five minutes before the truce."

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## Paris: "Preparations Going On"

French media speculated yesterday on the possibility of a signing of the peace accord and gave considerable play to Mme. Binh's Monday press conference. Comment was not available today, All Saints' Day.

State-run television's first network noted that "a lot of preparation has been going on" at the site of the open Paris talks, implying that a signing ceremony could be in view.

The second network ran excerpts of Mme. Binh's news conference, including her statement that "the question now is whether President Nixon really wants to end the war." It also reported the Saigon delegation's statement that "instead of holding news conferences the Communists should talk with us in constructive fashion to settle the unresolved problems."

## "Not a Simple Matter of Semantics"

The Washington correspondent of moderately-conservative *Figaro* said there was no fear that "peace has been pushed aside.... Without leaving the White House, Kissinger continues bargaining simultaneously with both Hanoi and Saigon." He added:

> "This secret, distant, triangular negotiation deals mainly with point four of the American-DRV agreement and, contrary to the impression the White House wanted to give, it is not a simple matter of semantics. Is the National Council for Reconciliation a trap? That is obviously Mr. Thieu's interpretation. That of Mr. Kissinger is more shaded.

> "The best way to end the deadlock is... to re-evaluate the meaning and the content of point four in every detail."

The correspondent asserted that "every day that goes by is a blessing for Thieu. The Pentagon does not hide the fact that for a week now the delivery of weapons to South Vietnam has been greatly accelerated. It is obvious that Washington is out to increase to the maximum the military potential of Saigon before a ceasefire." He added that Mr. Nixon is "assured that there will be more to lose on the eve of the elections by giving the impression of pitilessly imposing a still imperfect agreement on his South Vietnamese protege. On the day after November 7, Mr. Nixon's hands will be much freer in regard to both Hanoi and Saigon."

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# "Peace Will Not Change America"

Writing in the new weekly news magazine *Le Point*, a pro-Government Hachette publication, Raymond Aron considered the draft agreement and the possible effects of peace on America. On the question whether President Nixon would have been able to negotiate a similar compromise settlement four years ago he asserted:

> "I do not believe so. And in any case, the same compromise without the trips to Peking and Moscow would not have had the same meaning... Indeed, even before the field action ceases, the Vietnam war... no longer interests anyone.

> "It no longer interests the Chinese since they have been reassured about American intentions; it no longer interests the Russians, whose major concerns are on the Chinese border, in Europe, and on the Persian Gulf. It hardly interests the American people, whose earlier indignation McGovern was unable to rearouse..."

Estimating the effects of peace, Aron predicted that "the U.S. image will change on the outside more than internally," and added:

> "In fact, I do not expect the end of the Vietnamese tragedy to bring about any immediate and spectacular alterations inside America.... Without the war in Vietnam, the trips to Moscow and Peking would have taken place a few years earlier, the devaluation of the dollar a few years later. But the war was not the real cause of anything...

> "The war in Vietnam has magnified the ills of American society, but it did not create them..."

## Rome Radio: "U.S. Is Confident"

State-run Italian radio reported "confidence" in the U.S. that the North Vietnamese "will accept a request for other meetings to clarify some points... The White House has used different channels, like France and the Soviet Union, to reassure North Vietnam..."

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Left-of-center La Stampa of Turin asserted yesterday that "Nixon is engaged in a difficult move between Hanoi and Saigon... He must proceed cautiously because of the coming election... but everyone knows he wants the POWs home by Christmas."

Conservative Il Resto del Carlino of Bologna declared:

> "Nothing indicates that Nixon intends to speed up the conclusion of the conflict before election day. His position is very strong and he will be re-elected with a large majority, whatever happens in Vietnam... It was not the White House but Hanoi that pushed the negotiations and changed position in order to reach compromise..."

## Belgium: "No Illusions About Future"

The political director of mass-circulation Catholic labor Het Volk of Ghent, a paper that has taken a sympathetic view of American problems in Vietnam, wrote on Saturday that "we must not cherish illusions as to the political future of all of former Indochina. The American boys who died in Vietnam have sacrificed their lives in vain."

He expressed concern for the fate of Vietnamese Catholics who fled to the south: "What will be their fate if, as everyone expects, the entire peninsula comes under Communist domination?... These Vietnamese Catholics might well become the biggest losers of the war."

The influential Catholic Nieuwe Gids remarked that "united in war, the U.S. and South Vietnam are going their separate ways in peace."

On Monday, conservative Catholic La Libre Belgique of Brussels ran the comment of Senate President Paul Struye that "Mr. Kissinger's will and persistence have already ensured him the gratitude of all friends of peace."

Catholic labor La Cite asserted that the agreement, though yet unsigned, "is ready." It added, "Someone must go to Saigon to get it signed. If to accomplish this Thieu must be overthrown the way the overthrow of Diem was allowed in November 1963, it would be more prudent to do so after Nixon is re-elected."

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Vienna: "Tragic Epic of U.S. Involvement"

The Washington correspondent of Vienna's independent *Die Presse* wrote yesterday that American withdrawal under the terms of the cease-fire was ending "a tragic epic of misunderstood grandeur, the so-called policeman's role of the U.S."

She said the U.S. assumed the role of the defeated French in Indochina as a "natural heir," and recalled then Vice President Nixon's recommendation to send U.S. troops to Indochina to prevent a Communist seizure of power. She also noted an address by President Kennedy cautioning against "entering the jungle to fight the tiger," concluding:

"By an ironic twist of world history it was Kennedy who led the Americans into war in Indochina and Nixon, ten years later as President, who brought the troops home."

*Neue Zeit*, published by the Socialist Party in Graz, commented that it was "appropriate" that the draft agreement would be signed by Hanoi for the Viet Cong, but "a disgrace that the Americans are going to sign a document which will determine the fate of the South Vietnamese while their representative will merely be allowed to look on...."

"If the U.S. signs for South Vietnam, it will be responsible to the South Vietnamese people for the consequences of this agreement. Let us hope that the Americans will be luckier than in the past when they burdened the South Vietnamese people with a hopeless war."

Oslo: "U.S. Chose Path of Reason"

Oslo's Labor Party *Arbeiderbladet* observed today that "the world is practically silent and awaiting clarification of the last remaining difficulties between the parties to the war. This uneasy silence does not mean lack of interest. The great majority--governments and individuals--feel that nothing must be allowed to interrupt or complicate what is going on." The paper saw the chief adversaries, the U.S. and North Vietnam, at "a crossroads where both are aiming at peace, not at winning the war." It gave both sides credit for contributing to the compromise, and added:

"America's influence in the world has sunk considerably during this war, but we are also convinced that the American people deserve real honor for the fact that their President has chosen the path of reason...."

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Tokyo TV: "Thieu Willing to Talk to VC"

Japanese media continued to view Vietnam developments as a major opportunity to achieve peace in the area. Prominent coverage included reports on the visit to Japan of South Vietnam's chief delegate to the Paris talks, Pham Dang Lam, to explain Saigon's position on the peace proposals.

NHK-TV and other Japanese networks today carried reports from Saigon saying President Thieu had called for direct talks with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong to discuss a cease-fire and domestic political problems.

NHK-TV said:

"This indicates South Vietnamese willingness to hold serious talks with the Viet Cong."

Saigon-Tokyo Talks on Peace

Independent-moderate Mainichi of Tokyo today front-paged a report on Pham Dang Lam's visit yesterday with Deputy Prime Minister Miki. It quoted Lam as saying in that meeting that "the South Vietnamese Government is earnestly hoping to achieve a Vietnam peace" but that the matters agreed upon with North Vietnam "contain doubtful points" which must be clarified.

These points he reportedly listed as "the situation in regard to withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnamese territory" and "the nature of the proposed National Council." The paper quoted Miki as replying:

"The Japanese people also hope from the bottom of their hearts that this opportunity to attain peace will not be lost. The Japanese Government intends to cooperate as far as possible in reconstruction after the end of the Vietnam war."

Yesterday the paper carried a report from its Saigon correspondent that South Vietnam is confident that a compromise can be worked out, given a flexible attitude on the North Vietnamese side. He reported:

"It could be said that interest in Saigon is now focusing on the new political situation of the post-cease-fire period."

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Thieu Softening Stand?

Independent-moderate Yomiuri yesterday carried a Saigon correspondent's report that President Thieu appeared to be softening his stand toward the agreement because he had suddenly cancelled a speech which had been expected to oppose it. Despite the "opposition" campaign of the Thieu Government, the correspondent wrote, "the people of Saigon have started to hear the approaching footsteps of peace."

"Perfect Accord Would Take Years"

Top-circulation independent-liberal Asahi declared today:

"It would be desirable to iron out the content of the peace agreement in detail and draft a complete accord so that no doubtful points remain. But if such a procedure were undertaken, the Vietnam war could continue for one, or even two more years."

The paper maintained that "the important thing now is for all the belligerents in Vietnam to adopt the attitude that the war has come to an end, that from now on they must think only in terms of peace." It added:

"It should be pointed out that the basic principles outlined in the tentative agreement generally conform to the fundamentals upon which a great number of newly emerging countries have, since the end of World War II, started on the road toward nation-building following their liberation from colonialism."

Seoul: "U.S. Must Not Compromise"

Conservative top-circulation Donga Ilbo of Seoul said yesterday:

"The Nixon Administration may be concerned with the coming election, but we want to ask it once more not to settle for a compromise that will leave the seeds of trouble and prove psychologically frustrating to the rest of America's smaller allies."

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"Lesson for All Small Nations"

Playing the same theme, middle-of-the-road independent <u>Joongang Ilbo</u> of
Seoul declared:

"Seeing the way the U.S. is handling the negotiations, we must note that... the future of a country could be directed against its own will in the bargaining between big powers... Not just South Vietnam but all the smaller and weaker nations must learn a lesson from this... while the international situation is in flux they can be sacrificed to big-power politics."

Taipei: "Stand Firm and Fight!"

The privately-owned _United Daily News_ of Taipei declared on Saturday:

"The pressure the Government and people of Vietnam are going to bear is beyond calculation. In the face of this, the road to survival for Vietnam is to stand firm under the leadership of President Thieu and fight to the very end. Otherwise, be it coalition government or in-place ceasefire, the future of Vietnam is extremely grave...."

"It was a big mistake for America to join the war without wanting to win it in the first place. Now its reckless withdrawal from it further evidences the lack of policy. This is really a historic tragedy."

Also privately-owned, the _China Times_ of Taipei declared on Monday:

"We do not regard the unresolved questions pertaining to the peace settlement as technical questions... but questions of principle. Nevertheless, we still believe that a cease-fire is coming to Vietnam. The prime factor is that the Republic of Vietnam cannot carry on the war without American support..."

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Hong Kong: "Delay Cannot Change Decision"

The peace agreement has been the focus of press attention in Hong Kong since its revelation. Left-wing papers have questioned U.S. sincerity while anti-Communist papers accuse the U.S. of selling out South Vietnam.

Independent *Ming Pao* yesterday observed:

> "Given a close scrutiny, the basic content of the nine-point cease-fire agreement... is actually the very same proposals which the U.S. had repeatedly raised at the Paris peace talks all along, and which had repeatedly met with North Vietnam's categorical rejection...."

> "We believe this agreement will in the end be signed, and the cease-fire will ultimately become reality.... So long as the internal and external circumstances remain the same, delaying the signing for a few days cannot possibly change the over-all decision. North Vietnam's strong stance at this moment is merely an attempt to cover up the actual concessions it made in the agreement."

The paper asserted that the two main factors responsible for conclusion of the agreement were the failure of North Vietnam's invasion of the South and a change in "the attitude of the Chinese Communists... from pro-war to pro-peace."

Canberra: "Australia Should Demand U.S. Refuse to Sign"

Today's independent *Canberra Times* emphasized that "one of the conditions of the cease-fire is that North Vietnam should be allowed to leave in the south the 14 divisions of regular troops it has there."

> "If one couples this with the fact that there is no evidence that the North Vietnamese have abandoned their ambition to control South Vietnam, one begins to understand why President Thieu cannot sign the agreement devised secretly between Le Duc Tho and Dr. Kissinger."

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"It is incredible that President Nixon, who has given such solemn assurances about the right of the South Vietnamese to decide their own future, should expect President Thieu to sign an agreement that guarantees to North Vietnam the right and means to interfere permanently in the affairs of South Vietnam...."

"The least Australia can do is to demand of the Americans that they refuse to sign an agreement that allows almost the whole of the North Vietnamese army to stay in South Vietnam...."

## "Thieu is Entitled to Object"

The prestigious conservative *Sydney Morning Herald* found it "astonishing" that Washington and Hanoi should have reached a "near-agreement without, it appears, the participation of Saigon in the actual negotiations." It thought that while Washington"can point to concessions by Hanoi's agreement to a cease-fire in advance of a political settlement...Mr. Thieu is entitled, on behalf of a people which has just defeated an all-out North Vietnamese offensive, to object to terms which leave the North Vietnamese army in the south after the Americans go and in a position to infiltrate other areas of the south under cover of a truce..."

## Thailand: Pessimism

More than 30 editorials and columns on the Vietnam situation have appeared in the Thai press since the weekend. Most were pessimistic over the future for Indochina.

Several papers expressed sympathy for Mr. Thieu. A typical comment was, "Kissinger went to Saigon with full confidence in his capability to persuade Thieu to commit <u>hara-kin</u>" (<u>Phim Thai</u>).

Bangkok's <u>Thai Rath</u> declared that "even if Thieu gives in and concludes this cease-fire agreement, and if he agrees to a coalition government to be set up in Saigon, it is very doubtful whether such a coalition could really survive long."

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A columnist in Bangkok's _Daily News_ asserted that only the "American interference" will be ended. It said:

> "North Vietnam and South Vietnam, White Lao and Red Lao, and Sihanouk Cambodians and Lon Nol Cambodians will continue fighting as violently as ever until one side is able to seize total power..."

### Indian Views

The conservative _Hindu_ of Madras referred on Sunday to the prospective Vietnam settlement as a "Nixon coup."

The independent _Indian Express_ of New Delhi, Bombay and Madras said: "The U.S. has paid the heavy price of war to repel aggression but ended up by legitimizing it."

### Istanbul: "Thieu Must Go"

Leftist _Cumhuriyet_ of Istanbul remarked yesterday that "Thieu, who is in contradiction with the political circumstances of our time, will go whether he likes it or not... He is the latest example of the principle that 'leaders' who are not supported by their people and derive their power from foreign forces will go sooner or later."

### "Offers Indochina on a Platter"

Moderate-left _Yeni İstanbul_ asserted yesterday:

> "Can we find a better name for the Vietnam issue than 'defeat' when we think about the billions spent there and the thousands of lives lost? The peace agreement offers not only South Vietnam but the whole of Indochina to international Communism on a silver platter. Being lovers of peace, we consider mankind as a whole and therefore feel happy about the outcome of this issue. But the fact is that glorious America is tasting its first military defeat."

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Tunis: "Clear Warning to Thieu"

Independent as-Sabah of Tunis called the draft agreement a "refreshing demonstration" that force cannot "prevail against the will of the people when the people want peace....

"Hanoi and Washington appear to agree to the same principle of peace despite everything else and before everything else. The American Government did not wait for the approval of President Thieu to conclude an agreement with Hanoi. This demonstrates clear American resolve and is a clear warning to President Thieu that the U.S. has opted for peace and settlement and will not retreat."

"Thus, the long tragedy created by the blind logic of force starts to vanish as the will for peace triumphs.... So many of the tragedies of our age, particularly that of the Middle East, are caused by the blind logic of force, particularly that of Israeli colonialism. They will face the same fate, for which the Vietnam solution will serve as a lesson and example."

Kampala: "U.S. Sincerity Suspect"

Conservative Uganda Argus of Kampala yesterday expressed doubt that "technicalities" were the only obstacle to signature of the draft agreement, declaring instead that the "real stumbling block" was President Thieu. The paper asserted that it was the Nixon Administration 'which put President Thieu firmly on the path of intransigence."

"And that makes all the more suspect Washington's avowed sincerity in wanting to see this draft agreement stick."

Nairobi: "U.S. Should Put Saigon in Its Place"

The pro-British East African Standard of Nairobi on Monday urged that the accord be signed, asserting, "Peace at any price would be wrong, but peace with honor and the prospect of a future free of war should be enough to spur both sides to avoid yet another series of grim-faced meetings where minor points are allowed to destroy agreement on major issues." It declared that

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the U. S. "must put the Saigon hierarchy firmly in its place" so that the cease-fire could begin.

A comment in conservative Sunday Post blamed the U. S. for "encouraging" President Thieu's refusal to accept the terms of the draft agreement. The paper stated:

"Earlier in the year, we were made to feel that the Vietnam war was being manipulated to ensure Nixon's success in the elections. Now, the peace agreement is being delayed to ensure some sort of face-saving provision for Thieu...."

The paper concluded that the large majority of Vietnamese wanted peace and did not agree to deferring it, asserting, "America should accept that fact as it has accepted the need to coexist with Communist nations."

### Mexico City: "Delivers Saigon to Communists"

Conservative El Heraldo of Mexico City on Monday headlined a story, "Vietnam: Treason," and accused the U. S. of "delivering South Vietnam to the Communists because of selfish interests."

Moderately progressive El Universal contended:

"Obviously, there is no possibility that the Saigon Government could continue in a struggle it has been unable to win despite the strong support of the U. S. for more than a decade. Once U. S. support is withdrawn, the Thieu Government will collapse."

### Sao Paulo: "Nixon Still Holds Trumps"

Liberal Folha de Sao Paulo commented today that "to think Nixon no longer holds trump cards is naive. Nixon is above all a politician with a sense of opportunity." The paper said the President was seeking "something spectacular in Vietnam" for while "his re-election is guaranteed," what he was ultimately looking for was an overwhelming victory at the polls "from which he can emerge as the hero of a 'new American majority.'"

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# "An Invitation to the Communists"

Conservative *Jornal de Tarde* of São Paulo declared on Monday that "however 'dirty' the war has been, Kissinger's 'peace' is even 'dirtier.' It constitutes an invitation to the Communists to create in the third world one, or two, or three Vietnams...

"Thanks to this 'peace,' Nixon will obtain a much easier electoral victory, but the nation he will govern will no longer be one of the greatest major powers--ready to defend the Western world against its enemies--instead it will be the 'paper tiger' that Mao Tse-tung has been talking about. In short, it will be a nation that deserves the President it has."

## Hanoi: "U.S. Plots to Impose Neocolonialism"

To heavy treatment charging the U.S. with duplicity in failing to sign a peace agreement by Hanoi's deadline, North Vietnamese media have increasingly added exhortations to prepare to continue the struggle. An editorial in today's *Nhan Dan* calling on Party cadres to accelerate and improve propaganda efforts among the people said in part:

"The Americans have deceived public opinion and are plotting to seek a military victory and gain a position of strength in the negotiations in an attempt to impose neocolonialism on the southern part of our country. Therefore, our people have no choice but to continue to fight until total victory."

## Moscow Reports Deadline Expired

The Hanoi correspondent of Moscow radio domestic service yesterday noted the expiration of the Communist deadline and added: "The Vietnamese people therefore are showing vigilance. A battle watch is being maintained around the clock, Hanoi's defenders are ready at any moment to rebuff enemy attacks."

## Peking: "U.S. Faces Serious Challenge"

Peking *People's Daily* said today that the deadline "has now passed, but the agreement has not been signed, and peace in Vietnam has not been realized. The U.S. side must bear full responsibility for this complication."

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AVIATION WEEK - 30 OCTOBER 1972 (1 NOVEMBER)

The Military Reversal

The impending cease-fire and military truce in Viet-
nam are the result of many changing values in that
complex struggle. But the key to Hanoi's current ea-
gerness to end the fighting with a political settlement
lies in what has transpired on the battlefields of
South Vietnam and in the air over North Vietnam
since last spring.

When Hanoi launched its massive spring offensive, it envisioned a smashing, decisive military success in South Vietnam. Later it hoped for an equally important political success in the U. S. with the candidacy of Sen. George McGovern (D.-S. D.) and his abject attitude of "peace at any price." By mid-November, just a few weeks hence, the Hanoi government hoped to be dictating its harsh peace terms from a position of overwhelming military strength in Vietnam to a U. S. president who announced publicly that he would "rather beg than bomb."

In fact, the current situation is just the opposite. Hanoi is negotiating from the weakest military position it has held in eight years with the toughest U. S. president it has yet faced, who may not need the offered truce to insure his own re-election.

The war in Vietnam has received only superficial coverage in the daily newspapers and on television since its spectacular escalation last spring. But what has really happened in the intervening seven months has been a series of devastating blows to North Vietnam's military goals based on a series of fundamental miscalculations. The theories of the planners and the pundits on the military equation in Vietnam were blasted to bits by what happened on the battlefield.

Among these decisive factors were:

* Decision to cut off the flow of heavy military equipment and supplies from Russia and China by mining Haiphong and other major harbors and mounting a massive, persistent and effective campaign of aerial interdiction of supply lines between the source and the combat zones.

* Employment of new technology such as laser and television-guided bombs that provided pinpoint accuracy, and avionic and infrared sensors that stripped the cover of darkness and camouflage from enemy tank, truck and troop movements. New radar bombing techniques enabled massive B-52 strikes to hit North Vietnamese troop concentrations during their build-up phase prior to attack. ECM blunted the North Vietnamese air defense system. The new technology employed by U. S. forces overwhelmed the new technology employed by North Vietnam in tanks, heavy artillery, radar-controlled mobile flak

and infrared anti-aircraft missiles that were used in
their offensive drive for the first time.

* Dogged performance of the South Vietnamese army in its first crucial test of ground combat. Backed by its own air force and U. S. airpower and armed with modern weapons, the South Vietnamese army fought and held at most critical points and denied the North Vietnamese army its key strategic objectives. At Quang Tri, in a protracted bloody slugging match between elite North Vietnamese units and the crack South Viet Rangers and Marines, the southerners retook the city and drove their entrenched adversaries back north. By its failure to beat the South Vietnamese army on the ground, Hanoi suffered an enormous military and political loss that is still not fully appreciated in the Western world.

Since last spring Hanoi has literally lost its major military capability in its disastrous southern offensive; seen most of its modern military equipment blasted by airpower; watched its once never-ending sources of foreign supplies trickle to a halt and its once massive supply stockpiles dwindle to ant hills under the relentless pressure from the air, and watched its foreign allies lose their stomach for continuing support in the face of U. S. military pressure and diplomatic negotiations. The South Vietnamese army that was supposed to flee in terror all the way to Saigon or the sea is still there—battered, bloody and exhausted—but still there barring the way.

Some political ravens are croaking, "Well, why couldn't this cease-fire have been negotiated four years ago instead of just before an election?" The answer is that four years ago Hanoi still had a strong, menacing military capability. Its hopes for total victory were still high. It was not really interested in negotiating, just in detailing the U. S. surrender terms. Many people apparently have forgotten that the Chinese did not sue for peace negotiations in Korea until after their massive infantry hordes had been chewed up by "Ridgeway's meatgrinders"—that tremendous mobile firepower combination organized by Gen. Matthew Ridgeway—close air support plus heavy tank formations and motorized artillery supplied right up to the combat lines by air transport.

The North Vietnamese have suffered a major military defeat in the south and face an economic disaster in the north unless they find some way of relieving the unbearable pressure of airpower. That is why they are willing to negotiate now.

We hope the American people, who came very close in 1968 to allowing a disastrous capitulation, will understand the valid and necessary role of applied military power in achieving real peace instead of a surrender labeled "peace."

-Robert Hotz

DETROIT NEWS 28 OCTOBER 1972 (1 NOVEMBER)

The chicken or the egg?

Agreement has been reached on a
timetable for preparatory talks for
two important European confer-
ences next year in which the pro-
tagonists will be the NATO nations
and the Communist Warsaw pact
members.

Both talks are deeply involved
with security, but only one, that
being promoted by the Soviet Union,
is called the security conference.
The other, which NATO has pressed
for, is to seek agreement on mutual
and balanced reduction of forces on
either side of the Iron Curtain.

It is the old chicken and egg ques-

tion again when we try to establish
which is cause and which effect. Do
the arms on station cause the politi-
cal divisions and the tensions, or is
it the other way around? Common
sense dictates that the unfinished
political business of World War II
and its unsolved territorial disputes
cause the arms to be there in such
quantity.

The Russian aim in pushing the
security conference is to legitimize
its control of Eastern Europe and, if
possible, win western recognition of
East Germany. The reality is that
the Soviet Union does control East-
ern Europe and nothing short of

war will alter that. There is, how-
ever, no reason we should formally
acknowledged the fact. We have
managed for a generation without
doing so.

But we should try to take advan-
tage of the conference opportunity
to unravel some problems. There is
the question of the right of Soviet
citizens to emigrate — if cultural
exchange is to mean what it says.
There is the problem of getting
information through the Iron Cur-
tain. There is the need to establish
freer access for diplomats, newsmen
and visiting citizens in Eastern
Europe. The Russians will balk, but
it must be made clear they have to
pay some price to achieve their
goal.

2-E

DETROIT NEWS 25 OCTOBER 1972 (1 NOV)

Plans for POW's reviewed

By EDWIN G. PIPP
News Aerospace Writer

Thousands of men and women in the military services today are reviewing the roles they will have in an operation called "Egress Recap," the plan to return Americans from Vietnamese prison camps to the United States.

This is a Pentagon plan initiated during the Johnson administration and constantly revised to provide the best facilities, transportation and services for the freed prisoners of war.

"It covers every contingency concerning their release that we can think of," said a Department of Defense spokesman. "Our first concern is the physical and mental condition of the men.

"We want to return them to their homes in as near as possible the same condition as when they left."

Most optimistic of the many contingencies in Egress Recap is that Americans will be allowed to meet the released prisoners in North Vietnam and fly them out.

"IF THIS HAPPENS they will be immediately airlifted to an overseas hospital for physical examinations," the spokesman said. "Even if they are released some place outside North Vietnam, they will be transported as soon as possible to a service hospital."

The Air Force units that would be flying the former POWs, the hospitals they might go to and a variety of service personnel required to handle the men all have copies of plans which outline their duties.

The North Vietnamese have named 544 Americans they are holding. However, another 1,151 men are listed by the Defense Department as missing in action.

There are hopes by families and officials that some of the missing will be among the men released.

Hospitals where the returnees are most likely to go are at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and others in Japan, Okinawa or Guam.

"They probably will be there a minimum of two to three days," the spokesman said. "Even though a man appears to be healthy we want to give him an examination to be sure he is ready to return to the United States and his family."

At this first stop on the way home the men will get new uniforms, their pay will be straightened out and they will be questioned by intelligence officials.

ONE REASON for this is to get any details that can result in information about men still missing. Another is to learn about the behavior of other

Americans during captivity who might require special treatment.

The authorities will be seeking men who might have betrayed their companions to gain favors from the enemy, but the intelligence officials have been instructed not to make the individual feel guilty for such actions.

From the overseas hospitals the men will be assigned to hospitals near their homes where probably they will have the first meetings with their families.

"We don't expect to have any press conferences or families at the overseas hospitals," the spokesman. "This would just delay the objective of getting the men home as soon as possible. It will be up to the individuals whether they want to talk to the press or not."

At the state-side hospitals, physicians will determine when the men can have leave to spend at home. Also,

arrangements will be made for those who want to leave military service and others who want new military assignments.

The prisoner exchange following the end of the Vietnam War is not expected to be like that which followed the end of the Korean War or World War II when many more men were involved and the political climate was different.

AT THE END of World War II special camps were set up to handle the thousands of returning POWs. Following the ceasefire in Korea more than 3,000 American prisoners went through a "Freedom Gate" from North to South Korea.

In both cases the men had the freedom of talking to whom they wanted, although they were restricted to specific areas while arrangements were made to get them home quickly.

It is probable that the Vietnamese POWs will face

greater restrictions. Although the Egress Recap plan has completed details of where the men will go, Pentagon officials refuse to disclose the names of the overseas hospitals.

Studies of World War II and Korean prisoners have shown that the men have emotional adjustments to make before facing the public or even their families.

These studies indicate the men may suffer what is known as "concentration camp syndrome."

"This can include mental anxiety, impatience, impairment of memory and sleep, emotional instability, decreased self-esteem and loss of initiative, according to one report."

The adjustment to freedom can be achieved easier for some individuals if some treatment is given before they are released by the military, it said.

Bob Wiedrich

CHICAGO TRIBUNE 1 NOVEMBER 1972

Tower Ticker

The world this week awaits a possible peace in Viet Nam and the return of American POWs with joyous anticipation.

But lost in the thrill of the moment are the fates of two unique GI prisoners, both airmen, who have been held behind Communist prison bars for more than five years.

Both men were flying missions connected with the war in Southeast Asia when their planes were downed. Yet neither will presumably be involved in the POW exchange that would accompany a cease-fire, for both are held in Red China.

Air Force Maj. Philip Smith of downstate Roodhouse, Ill., was taken prisoner by the Communist Chinese Sept. 20, 1965, when his F-104 fighter was shot down near Hainan Island in the Gulf of Tonkin. He has been jailed seven years.

Navy Comdr. Robert Flynn of Houston, Minn., had his jet shot out from under him Aug. 21, 1967, when he strayed over the Chinese border while flying a mission over North Viet Nam. He has been held five years.

Since their capture, both fliers have been held prisoner in Peking.

To date, appeals for the release of Maj. Smith and Comdr. Flynn have remained unanswered by Red Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai.

But in recent months, there have been encouraging signs for the families of the two men, signs indicating a possible softening attitude toward their plight by the Chinese.

Several months after President Nixon's

visit to the China mainland last February, Smith and Flynn were removed from their cells and taken on sightseeing tours similar to those given their own commander-in-chief.

They viewed the Great Wall of China, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City, and even the Peking Zoo, where they got to see the two musk oxen given China by the United States in exchange for two giant pandas.

The men have been permitted a monthly exchange of letters with their families. And recently Maj. Smith has written home reporting his food has improved and he is being permitted to receive sports magazines and other nonpolitical reading material previously banned.

All these improvements in the lot of their loved ones have bolstered the hope of the Smith and Flynn families.

But still uncertainty over the future of the two fliers remains as peace looms on the Southeast Asian horizon with the tantalizing promise that hundreds of American fighting men may soon be returning to their homeland.

Hopefully, the Red Chinese will find it in their hearts to release these men, neither of whom presumably committed acts of war against mainland China. Chou En-Lai would have much to gain from such a humanitarian act as his nation moves closer to accord with the West.

Smith has a son he has never seen; Flynn last saw his son when the younger was 6 months old.

Both men, we think, have suffered long enough for apparent errors in navigation.

3-F

BALTIMORE NEWS-AMERICAN 31 OCTOBER 1972 (1 NOV)

# Peace Pact Seen Paving Way for Red Viet Takeover

By KINGSBURY SMITH

European Director and

Chief Foreign Writer

The Hearst Newspapers

PARIS — America is going to get peace in Vietnam and the Communists are eventually going to get control of South Vietnam. That is the view that prevails in French, Soviet and Chinese circles in Paris.

It is shared by a good many other European diplomatic observers who consider it a foregone conclusion that if America's peace deal with North Vietnam goes into effect in its present basic form, as is generally expected, it will pave the way for a Vietnam's Communist takeover of South Vietnam within two or three years.

French diplomacy, of course, is not unhappy about this prospect. The French have felt North Vietnam's Communist regime should be allowed to extend its control over the South ever since France gave up in 1954 its own war effort to restore French colonial rule in Indochina.

France also hopes to play an important role in the postwar reconstruction of both North and South Vietnam, which is slated to be largely financed by American money.

Since South Vietnamese

President Nguyen Van Thieu dislikes the French government intensely because of its pro-Hanoi attitude, the French naturally think they would have a better chance of doing business in the South if it was under North Vietnam's control.

France has many experts on Vietnam — technicians and economists who lived in the country for years under the French administration — men who speak Vietnamese and know the country and its people well. They consider themselves ideally suited to supervise any international project for the postwar reconstruction of Vietnam.

So the French are not as perturbed as some of America's other European allies about the risks involved in the agreement Dr. Kissinger negotiated with the North Vietnamese envoys in Paris.

The gravest risk for South Vietnam in that deal is believed to be the failure to provide for the post-ceasefire withdrawal of the 145,000 South Vietnamese troops which are now operating in the South.

The continued presence of that strong a North Viet-

names regular army force in the South after the ceasefire becomes effective would give the Vietnamese Communists the opportunity to resume major offensive military action inside South Vietnam any time they wanted to claim there had been a violation of the armistice by Saigon's forces.

A further grave weakness in the peace deal from South Vietnam's standpoint is the fact it does not provide for any limitation on war supplies to North Vietnam while it prohibits American military aid to South Vietnam except for replacement of damaged equipment.

Thus, North Vietnam could build up its military strength with Soviet and Chinese aid while South Vietnam's military strength would be frozen at its ceasefire level. This would give the North a powerful military edge over the South if war was resumed a year or so from now.

American diplomatic sources in Paris discount this danger. In the first place, they believe that both Russia and China, for different reasons, want to see the Vietnam War ended.

They doubt that either one

of the Communist giants will encourage Hanoi to try to conquer the South militarily once the peace agreement is put into effect.

Furthermore, it is pointed out that under the peace deal the United States will still retain air power in Thailand and aboard its naval carriers in the South China Sea. As long as President Nixon remains in the White House, those who know him have little doubt that he would order American air power to help defend South Vietnam again if Hanoi reneged on the peace settlement and launched an all-out military offensive to conquer the South.

European diplomats in Paris are much less inclined to believe that once the fighting stops and American forces are withdrawn from Vietnam, the United States would again intervene militarily if the war was resumed a year or two later.

Fear that the United States would not re-enter the war obviously exists in Saigon. The psychological effect of it on the South Vietnamese military leaders and politicians, coupled with the military advantage that the peace deal in its present known form gives North Vietnam, is seen likely to lead to an eventual Communist political if not military victory in the South.

NEW YORK TIMES 28 OCTOBER 1972 (1 NOV)

# A Famous Victory

By Anthony Lewis

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 27 — In a strange election, this must have been the strangest moment: George McGovern about to leave Detroit for his day of campaigning, and suddenly the accompanying press hears that Henry Kissinger is talking on television about peace in Vietnam. Everyone piles out of the buses to watch in the cocktail lounge of a Howard Johnson's motel.

Watching, it was as if the real campaign were there in the White House briefing room—and Henry Kissinger the candidate. His account of the Vietnam negotiations was professionally masterful; it was also a skilled political performance. Here was a White House foreign affairs adviser promising "an act of healing" for domestic "anguish" over the war, and ending with a political peroration: "We believe that we can restore both peace and unity to America very soon."

But after all the suffering and heartache, domestic politics is unimportant compared to an end of this war—

especially, for us, of America's role in it. As to that, the Kissinger statement and other events of the last few days have made a number of things clearer.

There is going to be a cease-fire: Kissinger's confidence about that is based solidly on the logic of the situation. President Nixon, having come this far, can hardly be seen to let peace slip away. Having at last engaged in a test of wills with his Saigon allies, he cannot afford to lose that contest. Nguyen Van Thieu, for his part, prefers as always to have the United States go on bombing his own country and the other three states of Indonesia until the last Communist is dead. But his leverage is limited. Four years ago he could deal from strength with President Johnson and candidate Humphrey because he had an alternative—Richard Nixon. This time he has no place else to go.

There was no comfort for Thieu in Kissinger's words. He said Saigon's views "deserves great respect." But he made clear that the South Vietnamese had not been informed during the crucial period of negotiation with Hanoi, and said cordially: "We will make our own decisions as to how long we believe a war should be continued."

As for Hanoi, its interest would also seem to lie in an early conclusion of

the terms. It must have sought a timetable ending Oct. 31, as Kissinger disclosed, because it thought President Nixon was going to be re-elected and correctly believed that he would have the strongest motivation to put pressure on Saigon before Nov. 7. That is still the case.

The terms disclosed in Hanoi and Washington still leave fundamental questions completely up in the air: What will be the relationship between the Thieu Government and the new Council of National Reconciliation? How can the council conceivably operate under the proposed rule of unanimity? Who will really control the ground as attempts at a political settlement are made during the ceasefire? Who will control the police in South Vietnam?

Uncertainties of that kind were probably always going to be present in anything that passed for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam. Their existence now serves to emphasize the doubtful rationality—to put it mildly—of what the Nixon Administration has done over the last four years to obtain these particular terms.

It is true enough, as Kissinger said, that Hanoi has changed its position: It has agreed to separate military and

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

5-F

WASHINGTON POST

6 November 1972

Joseph Alsop

# An Upheaval in Hanoi?

concrete bunker evidently used as a headquarters. In his hurry to get away, the Vietcong leader left behind the cease-fire plans.

That night and in the next several days, 62 suspected Vietcong agents were arrested, including more than a dozen young terrorists recently trained in demolition work. More than 100 pounds of explosive material was seized.

Even so, nearly everyone here concedes that the "other side's" ability to plan ahead has been among the most impressive aspects of its performance in the continuing struggle for Indochina.

BALTIMORE SUN
3 November 1972

U.S.S.R.
shifts its
pressure

By MICHAEL PARKS
Moscow Bureau of The Sun

Moscow — The Soviet Union appears to be easing its pressure, at least in public, on North Vietnam to return to the negotiating table and conclude the cease-fire agreement with the United States.

Commentaries in the Soviet press in the last three days make the common observation that the U.S. demand for one last round of negotiations is becoming a serious obstacle to peace.

"Whatever the reason for the United States' maneuvering with respect to the signature of the Vietnamese-American agreement," one of Pravda's top political commentators, Victor Mayevsky, wrote yesterday. "there is hardly any doubt that the policy of delay and procrastination is a policy that has outlived itself, a policy doomed to failure."

Most of the other Kremlin comments remain moderate in tone, but the emphasis has decidedly shifted from one urging Hanoi to continue the negotiations to one urging the United States to sign the tentative agreement without further objection.

But Moscow still has done nothing to retract or even counterbalance the public declaration of Premier Alexei N. Kosygin last Friday urging North Vietnam to return to the negotiating table.

North Vietnamese officials reportedly are still smarting from that public lecture. "It is one thing to tell an ally in private what you think he

THERE IS a good chance that the great change of policy in Hanoi was preceded by a great political upheaval, including the severe downgrading of North Vietnam's crucially important First Party Secretary, Le Duan. This is not certain as yet, but the wisest American analysts consider that it is highly probable.

As usual in such cases, the evidence will appear trifling to anyone who is not a close student of North Vietnamese affairs. Perhaps the most impressive item is a recent photograph showing the party leadership at a public reception.

Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Le Duan's bitter-enemy and rival, Truong Chinh — these and all other leaders of consequence where conspicuously present, while Le Duan alone was conspicuously absent. The First Party Secretary's absence was significant, of course, precisely because the lineup of personages on public occasions is always a message telling who is who.

The photograph, in turn, underlined the further fact that Le Duan, usually most active, has not been publicly seen or heard from since September. This is not surprising, either, since the North Vietnamese policy change undoubtedly dates from mid-September. And when a great mistake is acknowledged by a great change of policy, the principal author of the mistake is usually made to suffer for it.

IN THE CASE of North Vietnam, it is inordinately difficult, of course, to know for sure which leader was on what side in any given decision. It is widely sup-

posed, for example, that General Giap was a strong backer of the policy of huge North Vietnamese investments in the war in South Vietnam. Yet most of the inner group of experts instead believe that Giap was really an advocate of the doctrine of classical guerrilla war — which he wrote himself after the French defeat.

In the case of Le Duan, in contrast, there is no room for doubt about his role. The documents have consistently shown the First Party Secretary as the leading advocate of using North Vietnam's manpower and resources with an unsparing hand, in order to aid the Vietcong in the South.

With equal consistency, the evidence has shown Truong Chinh on the opposite side of the argument, in favor of putting the home front first, in fact. In addition, Le Duan is one of the two Hanoi politburo members who comes from South Vietnam, whereas Truong Chinh is a Northerner, and is Chinese Communist-trained, to boot. His name, a pseudonym, even means "Long March."

IF TRUONG CHINH is up and Le Duan is down (or even out), it certainly does not mean that the angels of light have triumphed over the powers of darkness. Yet, if this is really the way of it, the fact has immense meaning, nonetheless.

Suppose a great political upheaval has, in fact, preceded what looks like a great change of policy, to begin with. It is then much, much safer to assume that the policy change is real.

This has direct bearing on the most vital question raised by Dr. Henry A. Kiss-

singer's negotiations. That question, of course, is whether the North Vietnamese mean to cheat again this time, as they cheated so flagrantly and promptly after their Laos agreement with Governor Averell Harriman in 1962.

Truong Chinh being up and Le Duan down further fits neatly with the course of the Kissinger negotiations, since the North Vietnamese began to get down to business in late September. On the one hand, Le Duan bears the heaviest responsibility for the sacrifice in war of at least a million of North Vietnam's young men — the equivalent of 11 million Americans. Yet if Hanoi does not cheat, this dire sacrifice will be in vain.

ON THE OTHER HAND, as above-noted, Truong Chinh has always been an advocate of priority for the home front. And as soon as they got down to business in the talks, the theme of American aid to help reconstruct the home front became very important indeed.

There is another potential meaning, too, in the appearance of a political upheaval in Hanoi. If the appearance is not misleading, in fact, it is clinching evidence that we could not possibly have got a deal of the sort the Nixon administration has now got, either four years ago, or even four months ago.

But the claim that we could have got such a deal much earlier, is also shown to be self-serving hogwash by, a mountain of other evidence. And while the probability is clear that Truong Chinh is up and Le Duan is down, we must still wait for certainty.

© 1972, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON POST
4 November 1972

U.S. Aid to Laos

Reuter

BANGKOK, Nov. 3—The U.S. Agency for International Development has ordered 9,000 tons of rice from Thailand to supply Laos, which is suffering from a rice shortage, a Thai provincial governor said today.

should do," said a Communist diplomat close to the situation, "but it is quite another to make a public declaration contradicting his stand at a particularly sensitive time. ... Nothing has changed in that regard."

25

LOS ANGELES TIMES

29 OCT 1972

# Hanoi's Haste for a Cease-Fire:
## Time Had Become the Enemy

BY ROBERT S. ELEGANT

Times Staff Writer

SAIGON — Overwhelming pressures compelled Hanoi's almost-frantic haste to attain and seal a peace agreement once the Communists had made the fundamental judgment that they could not win total victory.

Each individual disadvantage exacerbated the others, and cumulative pressure intensified with each passing day. Finally, Hanoi realized with dismay that time was no longer on its side, but had become its enemy. At last the iron obduracy of the Hanoi leadership cracked. The hierarchy chose to settle for the best possible terms—rather than holding out for the impossible triumph.

This is the way things evolved, in the view of Asian experts.

After insisting during four years of talks with the United States that Washington could secure an armistice and repatriation of American

prisoners of war only by destroying the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Hanoi abruptly altered its basic negotiating position on Oct. 8.

The Communists did not merely accept the American concept that the military and the political aspects of the South Vietnamese problem be settled independently of each other. They acknowledged the logical consequences of that decision by withdrawing their demand that the Saigon administration of President Nguyen Van Thieu be superseded by a coalition government of their own design before the shooting could stop.

The pragmatic faction in the Political Bureau of the Labor (Communist) Party of Vietnam finally overruled the faction which was deter-

mined to fight on at any cost. It had become clear to the hierarchy that that "logic of history" was—even if only temporarily—no longer was operating in its favor. A number of the major compulsions which forced that decision can be clearly described from Hanoi's own utterances and from intelligence studies.

Above all, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the

"firm rear area of the liberation struggle in the south," has suffered political, economic and social damage which Hanoi could no longer accept.

The new, more accurate American bombing and the quasi-blockade which began last spring reop-
ened the wounds left by
the four years of bombing
which began in 1964. Made
worse by floods and other
natural catastrophes, the
economic predicament of
the north had become des-
perate. Hanoi could not re-
build its shattered produc-
tive machine; it could not
even feed its people.

Domestic Crisis

Socially and politically, the loss of more than 1.3 million men was bringing Hanoi to domestic disaster. The party's control was weakened by bombardment that Premier Pham Van Dong himself described as "horrendous."

There was, the pragmatasts apparently argued, simply no point in accepting enormous damage when the chances of conquering the south militarily were diminishing, instead of growing.

"Vietnamization," the American policy of strengthening South Vietnam's armed forces, was scoffed at elsewhere. But Hanoi considered Vietnamization such a grave danger that it chose to end the fighting rather than let the process continue.

After all, the once-dispised South Vietnamese had made remarkable progress since they were saved from destruction only by massive American ground forces from 1965 to the Tet offensive of early 1968. Moreover, Hanoi had suffered a series of military disasters beginning with the Tet offensive and culminating in the spring

offensive of 1972 when southern infantrymen, supported by the United States only in the air, turned the tide.

6 Divisions Lost

Intelligence specialists In Saigon estimate that the South Vietnamese machine and airborne divisions destroyed six North Vietnamese divisions as fighting units in the battles that began last spring. The Communist offensive planned for August never materialized.

Despite the temporary setbacks of Tet 1968 and spring 1972, Saigon was consolidating its political position and extending its influence over the countryside. The Viet Cong were virtually a spent force, losing ground each day.

Once the myth of Communist invincibility had been punctured, it was not only the declining morale of the Viet Cong that deeply troubled Hanoi. The fearful respect for the Communists which had mesmerized so many South Vietnamese was vanishing.

Worse from Hanoi's point of view, the force once hailed as its "great ally." American and world public opinion, was not effective. Vietnam was simply no longer the intense issue it had once been in the United States and President Nixon, the obdurate enemy the Communists could not intimate, appeared certain of reelection.

Hanoi obviously wanted to get agreement before Mr. Nixon was reelected. The Communists feared he might then feel himself so strong that he would impose his own conditions instead of compromising. They also feared he might renege on any compromise that was not sealed before election. Therefore, it appears, the eagerness to get

agreement signed by
Tuesday and, therefore,
Hanoi's elevation of the
progress of the secret ne-
gotiations.

Before the election, a peace agreement could be represented to the North Vietnamese people as a great victory over the United States. Afterward, it could not, just as Nguyen Van Thieu could not be depreciated by Hanoi's attempt to make him look like a puppet of the Americans.

The final factor was at least as decisive as the others — and, perhaps, even more important.

Hanoi's two chief allies, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were proving most unreliable. They were feuding with each other, as they had for a decade, and both were, independently, drawing ever closer to the United States. Hanoi's chief enemy.

Lavishly Equipped

After North Vietnamese troops, lavishly equipped by the Russians, were thrown back last spring, Moscow's enthusiasm for Hanoi's cause cooled notably. Not only did the Russians receive President Nixon shortly after he ordered the bombing and blockade but, worse, the Russians made no effective effort to breach the blockade.

For its part, Peking had made it clear that China would not welcome North Vietnamese dominion over Cambodia and Laos. For their own reasons, the Chinese wanted neither the repute of American military prowess in Asia destroyed nor to encourage a Vietnamese-ruled bloc which could dominate Southeast Asia.

Faced with the combined effect of these deleterious trends and convinced that the effects would grow worse with time, Hanoi finally yielded its demand for immediate political victory—to carry on the fight by other means.

36

Max Lerner

THE WARS OF PEACE

Peace hath its ordeals no less turbu-
lent than war. The current hassles over
the final signing of a Vietnam cease-fire
are proof that we can speak of the wars
of peace as well as the wars of war.
Consider what these wars look like at
this moment.

Q There was the hassle about signing on Halloween. Hanoi's haste was easily explainable. First, the desire to put pressure on President Thieu, and cut short the build-up of public opinion in South Vietnam which he is now preparing.

Second, the desire to have the cease-
fire completed before, not after, Amer-
ica's Election Day, when President Nix-
on feels somewhat more vulnerable
than he will feel later. Third, the desire
to keep some unclarified aspects of the
agreement relatively vague. Every
writer on negotiations with Commu-
nists bears witness to their capacity
for exploiting disputes over verbal
meanings.

have mastered the technics and tactics
of such propagandizing. Every village
they gain means another area in which
they can use this mastery.

You would think that President Thieu
would know this, and would therefore
sign the cease-fire sooner rather than
later. Yes, but Thieu doesn't have as
good propaganda cadres as the Com-
munists, and he needs time to build
them and thus be ready for the be-
ginnings of the election effort. He loses
territory to gain time.

Q This leads into the interim care-
taker hassle. There is a plan for a tri-
partite National Council of National
Reconciliation and Concord—a mouth-
filling name which could either turn
out to be a coalition government or an
electoral commission. Hanoi wants it to
be the first, Thieu wants it to be the
second.

This is where the biggest infighting
will come, and this is what Thieu's cur-
rent speeches bristle with. If it doesn't
get settled the shooting could break
out again, and the election results
would follow the results of the guns.

Thieu is a foot-dragger and obstacle-
imposer, but he is not simply that.
He is also a shrewd politician, for whom
his American allies have made a sur-
prisingly acceptable peace. But he has
to sell that peace to his own military
and leadership groups, and to his
people.

He must appear to them his own
man, neither victim of Hanoi nor puppet
of Washington. He must give some
evidences of concessions from both.
Hence what would otherwise appear to
be only his obstructionist antics.

There will turn out to be two de facto
governments operating in South Viet-

nam in the interval from the cease-fire
to the elections. The hassle will be an
interim propaganda struggle between
them.

There is the election hassle itself.
This is where all the roads lead to—
and from. All through the war the
question of who will rule South Vietnam
has been the dominant one.

That is what the killings and dyings
were for. This is why Nixon and Kiss-
singer insisted that a military settle-
ment had to precede a political one,
so that the non-Communists would
have a fighting chance at power in
Saigon.

Have they? A fighting chance, yes.
If you talk of probabilities, it is still
too early. The election is the core, and
the election is anything but determined.
Despite the burgeoning anti-American-
ism in South Vietnam, what the Amer-
ican people think and feel is bound to
be reflected in the minds of the South
Vietnamese. If American opinion
crosses President Thieu off as a cipher
or worse, he will have the election
stacked against him.

On the face of it, Thieu's chances
are passable. He controls less than two-
thirds of the territory, but this includes
almost 90 per cent of the people. They
are war-weary, and Thieu has been
rough with their village councils and
high-handed in Saigon.

But they are mostly against the kind
of domination from the center that
communism involves. They may prefer
to stick with dangers they know rather
than flee to greater dangers they know
not of. On the other hand, their war-
weariness may make them succumb to
Communist indoctrination, as has hap-
pened with other war-weary popula-
tions.

This much is clear: that even before
the ceasefire has been signed, the
struggle for voters has already started.
No sooner will the American elections
be over than the South Vietnam elec-
tions begin. Better elections than death.

President Nixon fended off this move,
Henry Kissinger dealt with it adroitly
in his press conference—and despite
its present bristling, Hanoi will take
the rebuff in stride.

Q There is the land-grab hassle. This
means heavy fighting on both sides to
grab or hold hamlets in South Vietnam,
since the cease-fire-in-place means that
the power positions will be frozen at
the moment of signing.

More is at stake here than simply a
few more or less villages to rule tem-
porarily, until the supervised elections.
What is at stake is the chance to
propagandize the people in those vil-
lages in preparation for the elections.

The Communists, over the years,

# Max Lerner

## WHAT KIND OF PEACE?

Even in the last stage of reaching for peace there are different negotiating styles, as witness Hanoi's, Saigon's and Washington's.

Hanoi's style was brusque and abrasive to the U.S., breaking the news of the agreement unilaterally, going over President Nixon's head to reach the American people directly and get them to pressure President Thieu into accepting the peace terms fast. Thieu's style was belligerent, asserting that peace between the two Vietnams was for him to make, not for the U.S., and that there would be no peace agreement until he signed it. Washington's was couched in the calm, precise, yet confident language of Henry Kissinger's press briefing.

The fighting that continues is an effort on each side to position itself for the peace it expects, to have as much territory as possible to govern when the ceasefire comes. I feel it will come. When it does it will be a great historic event, the end of an ordeal, not only for America which lost so many lives, but for both Vietnams which lost many more and confronted each other with greater hatreds.

It isn't the best peace that any of the three governments in the struggle could have hoped for. Hanoi wanted the guarantee of a coalition government in South Vietnam even before a ceasefire, and it wanted Thieu sent packing. It got neither. Saigon wanted the withdrawal of North Vietnam's forces from the South, just as Washington did. Neither got it. Both also feared the possible emergence of a coalition government, especially Thieu. But

such a government may come. Kissinger must have been unable to marshal much evidence for Thieu that it wouldn't.

But while it isn't the best peace for any of the three ruling groups, it is likely to be a good ending for a bad war for all their people. It will stop the killing, it will start the maneuvering for a supervised election in South Vietnam, and it will start the postwar reconstruction of both Vietnams.

When Richard Nixon calls it a "peace with honor" as against a "peace with surrender" he is arguing for political advantage, and he oversimplifies the differences. Yet most detached observers, like the rather cool-headed diplomats in the UN, are surprised at how well America comes out in the peace agreement. Everyone had expected that America's naked humiliation would be only thinly covered over by some rhetorical figleaf. That hasn't happened. The fact of the military ceasefire coming before the political settlement, and the fact of the salvaging of the Saigon government, at least for the preparatory period before the elections—these are far more than figleaf or face-saving.

If you look at the peace from that angle, then Sargent Shriver's charge that it is all a maneuver for election advantage seems a shrill evaluation. To George McGovern's credit he doesn't make that claim. He does say that it is a settlement that America could have had at any time in the last four years. I doubt it strongly. It can't bear the weight of the evidence that Henry Kissinger piled up against such a view

when he discussed Hanoi's switch in its peace position on Oct. 8. McGovern's claim that the antiwar movement must take considerable credit for pressuring the Administration into peace is on firmer ground, although not the whole story.

The real count against Nixon is that in maneuvering for almost four years to get a "peace with honor," he is getting it—but at what cost?

There is little doubt about the skill with which Kissinger pursued his "linkage" theory—that the China and Russia and SALT and Vietnam segments of American policy were all linked. The American bombing and mining weakened the Hanoi offensive of the spring, and the deals with China and Russia increased Peking and Moscow pressure on Hanoi, and Nixon's Great Powers policies strengthened him against McGovern in the election campaign, and the reality of Nixon's voter strength and McGovern's voter weakness finally crashed through to Hanoi.

Put them all together and you get a whole parallelogram of pressures that led Hanoi to its Oct. 8 concessions, and thus to the ceasefire.

But again one must ask: at what cost? At the cost of four additional years of war, with its tens of thousands of deaths and maimings in all the camps, its desolation of families, and its destructiveness of social ties and the human spirit.

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger know power. They know how to use it in confronting ruthless enemies, and they handle its nuances with skill. The rulers of Hanoi, as well as of Moscow and Peking, must respect that skill. But the haunting question persists. How many people have had to pay how much so that Nixon and Thieu and the Politburo at Hanoi could carry on their game of power?

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Copyright © 1972
Los Angeles Times

DAILY 10c

# U.S. Insists Hanoi Pull Back Troops

## Requires Action on Withdrawal of 145,000 Men Before Signing

BY ROBERT C. TOTH

Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The United States is requiring tangible action by Hanoi toward pulling back its 145,000 troops in South Vietnam before signing a peace agreement, The Times learned Monday.

This is one of the "six or seven concrete issues" that Henry A. Kissinger, President Nixon's national security affairs adviser, said last Thursday had to be resolved before a settlement could be concluded.

But he outlined only five issues, which he said had to be negotiated in a final negotiating session. Authoritative sources Monday said that Kissinger deliberately omitted the other issues because the Administration hopes they will be solved de facto outside the scope of the formal agreement and thus avoid a face-to-face confrontation over them at the anticipated last meeting.

These hitherto undisclosed issues are known to involve the U.S. requirement that Hanoi take certain actions, details of which were communicated to the North Vietnamese, involving the pullback of their troops.

### Thieu's 'Minimum Demand'

South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu had said that total Hanoi withdrawals was his "minimum demand" for accepting a cease-fire.

It was not known whether the United States also wants some pullback of Hanoi's estimated 60,000 troops in Cambodia before signing the settlement.

Coincidentally, reports from Saigon Monday to the Washington Post said that Hanoi's forces in South Vietnam have been alerted to prepare for a pullback.

Meanwhile, there were hints in Washington that the Administration was becoming adamant about reach-

ing a quick settlement on Hanoi's timetable of the outstanding issues. As the North Vietnamese deadline for signing came today without a new negotiating date set, a final agreement before the U.S. election next Tuesday appeared all but impossible.

Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.) said Monday after a private briefing by Mr. Nixon and other officials that he did not expect the cease-fire before the elections but that he did expect the United States to have its prisoners of war home by Christmas regardless of Thieu's position. The Administration views Thieu's objections as "political rhetoric," Brooke said.

### Essentials Remain Unchanged

The essentials of Kissinger's Thursday press conference remain unchanged, sources said Monday. Kissinger then foresaw one more negotiating session lasting three or four days to wrap up the settlement. After describing the five outstanding issues, he said:

> "The issues that I have mentioned are soluble in a very brief period of time. We have undertaken, and I repeat it here publicly, to settle them at one more meeting, and to remain at that meeting for as long as is necessary to complete the agreement."

In some contrast, the authoritative sources on Monday emphasized that Kissinger had also said: "We will not be stampeded."

If goodwill is shown by Hanoi at the next meeting and the agreement is completed, the sources said, it will still be necessary for Washington to examine the results, to consult with Saigon again (perhaps with another Kissinger trip), and even perhaps to exchange cables on final points with

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10/31/72