No matter what happens after the
Indochinese peace talks resume on
Dec. 4, it now seems reasonably clear
that Dr. Henry Kissinger had little
basis for his statement on Oct. 26,
twelve days before the election, that
"peace is at hand," subject only to a
few minor details of negotiation. He
said, it is clear, no real agreement with
Hanoi and Saigon on ending the war;
no such agreement seems to exist a
month later; and it is highly question-
able whether either Dr. Kissinger or
President Nixon could have believed
on Oct. 26 that they actually had
reached an agreement that would
bring what Mr. Nixon called that night
in Ashland, Ky., "peace with honor
and not peace with surrender."

Quite obviously, there can be no
cease-fire in South Vietnam until the
Saigon Government agrees to a cease-
fire, for the simple reason that that
Government has in its army a million
men, armed to the teeth by the United
States. In the final analysis, the only
way Washington can impose a cease-
fire on that Government and that
army is by threatening to cut off their
military supplies.

Is that a serious proposition? After
having for four years maintained the
war, at a cost of 20,000 American
deaths, billions of American dollars,
and incalculable Indochinese casual-
ties, all for the stated purpose of giv-
ing the Saigon regime a "chance" to
survive, is it really conceivable that
Mr. Nixon is now prepared to ask
Congress to shut off military support
to that regime—thus throwing an
"ally" to the Communists, even though
Mr. Nixon has said repeatedly that if
he did that, a gigantic bloodbath
would ensue and world peace would
be threatened?

Yet, as recently as this weekend,
President Thieu's controlled news-
paper, Tin Song, said in Saigon that
before there can be a cease-fire, North
Vietnam must withdraw its troops
from South Vietnam, the demilitarized
zone—in effect, a national border—
must be re-established at the 17th
parallel, and the role of the National
Council of Reconciliation and Concord
—envisioned in the Kissinger-Le Due
Tho draft accord—must be more
clearly defined. These are merely the
central issues of the war; if they have
to be settled before Saigon agrees to
a cease-fire, then it follows that on
Oct. 26 the Nixon Administration did
not really have an agreement for a
cease-fire that depended only on the
working out of a few details.

As another example, Dr. Kissinger
said that the release of American
prisoners of war by Hanoi was not
dependent on the release of political
prisoners by Saigon. This seemed to be
confirmed in a statement by Xuan
Thuy, a principal North Vietnamese
negotiator. Yet, since then, the North
Vietnamese Communist newspaper,
Chan Dan, has asserted just the oppo-
site view, and the North Vietnamese
summary of the draft accord (with
which Dr. Kissinger said he had "no
complaint") declared that "the return
of all captured and detained personnel
of the parties shall be carried out
simultaneously with the U.S. troops'

SW YORK TIMES 28 NOV 72
# Was Peace At Hand?

withdrawal."

Since many political prisoners held
by Saigon would be an important part
of the so-called "third force" supposed
to be included in the National Council
of Reconciliation and Concord, is it
realistic to suppose that Hanoi agreed
to leave them to the mercy of Saigon?
In any case, it is a legitimate question
whether Dr. Kissinger was entitled to
speak as specifically on the matter as
he did on Oct. 26.

By far the major question concerns
the status of North Vietnamese forces
in South Vietnam. The summary of the
draft accord with which Dr. Kissinger
had "no complaint" on Oct. 26 does
not mention a withdrawal of North
Vietnamese forces; every commentator
pointed out that this was a major
American concession. Yet, Saigon
patently is unwilling to accept this
arrangement; and some informed Gov-
ernment sources insist that Dr. Kissin-
ger's failure to secure an agreement
for North Vietnamese withdrawal
caused Washington—not just Saigon—
to pull back from accepting his draft
accord with Le Due Tho. To have
accepted that draft, they say, would
have given Hanoi what it had sought
all along—an American withdrawal

from the battlefield, while Hanoi was
left free to settle Indochinese military
and political affairs in direct and un-
impeded struggle with Saigon.

Now it is being asserted in Washing-
ton, through studied leaks and calcu-
lated statements, that the American
side is pressing for further concessions
only in order to be able to tell Saigon
honestly that further concessions can-
not be had; even if that were true,
however, it still implies that on Oct. 26
there was no real basis for asserting
that only a few unimportant details
stood in the way of a peace which
was "at hand."

On that date, Dr. Kissinger—who
was just back from Saigon—must have
known that President Thieu did not
accept the most important parts of the
draft accord; he could hardly have
been justified in asserting, therefore,
that only a few minor details remained
to be worked out with Hanoi; and if it
finally turns out that the central issue
of the renewed negotiations is the
withdrawal of North Vietnamese
forces, the real question will be
whether President Nixon himself ever
accepted the Kissinger-Le Due Tho
draft accord, which was supposed to
have meant that peace was at hand.

WASHINGTON POST 26 NOVEMBER 1972 (27)

The Gallup Poll

Public Is Confident
Nixon Can End War

By George Gallup

PRINCETON, N.J. — As cease-fire talks between Henry A. Kissinger and Hanoi's chief negotiator, Le Duc Tho, continue, here is a post-election assessment of the views of the public on the Vietnam situation.

1. The public has confidence in the way President Nixon is proceeding to bring the war to an end. His approval rate on this matter is, in fact, virtually the same as his margin of victory over Sen. George McGovern.

2. For more than six years—since June, 1966—the majority of Americans have held only one view about how the war will conclude—that it will end in some kind of compromise and not victory or defeat.

3. The public's perception of South Vietnam's ability to establish, when the war ends, a government strong enough to withstand Communist pressures has never been great. American attitudes on this point are virtually the same today as they were six and a half years ago.

4. While every Gallup survey taken this year has shown that the public would like to get all American troops out of Vietnam by the end of the year, present thinking on the part of the majority of voters is that a full settlement will not be reached by January, 1973.

5. Since August, 1968, a majority of Americans have thought that it was a mistake to become involved with troops in Vietnam, and have approved plans for bringing U.S. troops home while South Vietnamese

were trained to take over the fighting. At the same time most citizens have not been willing to abandon South Vietnam to the Communists.

Here is the question and results:

How do you think the war in Vietnam will end—in an all-out victory for the U.S. and South Vietnamese, in a compromise peace settlement, or in a defeat for the U.S. and the South Vietnamese?

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Vic.</th><th>Com.</th><th>De.</th><th>No.</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>lary promise</th><th>feat</th><th>opin</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Latest</td><td>7%</td><td>69%</td><td>12%</td><td>12%</td></tr><tr><td>Feb., 1968</td><td>20%</td><td>61%</td><td>5%</td><td>14%</td></tr><tr><td>Dec., 1967</td><td>19%</td><td>61%</td><td>4%</td><td>13%</td></tr><tr><td>June, 1967</td><td>15%</td><td>55%</td><td>5%</td><td>25%</td></tr><tr><td>June, 1964</td><td>17%</td><td>54%</td><td>6%</td><td>25%</td></tr></tbody></table>

Even if the U.S. and North Vietnam can come to peace terms, a majority of the American people doubt that the South Vietnamese can develop a strong enough government to withstand Communist pressures.

In May, 1966, opinion was 5-to-3 that the South Vietnamese would not be able to establish a stable government if the U.S. and North Vietnam came to peace terms and U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. In the latest survey, this same 5-to-3 ratio still obtains. Following is the question and trend:

If the U.S. and North Vietnam come to peace terms and U.S. troops are withdrawn from Vietnam, do you think that a strong enough government can be developed in South Vietnam to withstand Communist pressures?

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Yes</th><th>No</th><th>No</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Latest</td><td>31%</td><td>47%</td><td>22%</td></tr><tr><td>Sept., 1967</td><td>26%</td><td>56%</td><td>18%</td></tr><tr><td>June, 1967</td><td>25%</td><td>52%</td><td>23%</td></tr><tr><td>Mar., 1967</td><td>13%</td><td>46%</td><td>23%</td></tr><tr><td>Dec., 1968</td><td>32%</td><td>41%</td><td>24%</td></tr><tr><td>May, 1966</td><td>32%</td><td>48%</td><td>20%</td></tr></tbody></table>

Despite some earlier assurances from Washington that an end to the war is in sight, only a third of persons interviewed in the latest survey think a settlement will be reached by the end of the current year.

Here is the question and national results:

Do you think a settlement in Vietnam will be reached by the end of this year, or not?

<table><tr><td>Yes</td><td>25%</td></tr><tr><td>No</td><td>55%</td></tr><tr><td>No opinion</td><td>10%</td></tr></table>

Today's report is based on 1,205 in-person interviews. Interviewing was conducted in more than 300 scientifically selected localities across the nation.

© 1972, Field Enterprises, Inc.

NEW YORK TIMES 3 December 1972 P1

Saigon Expects Cease-Fire Pact in Week
With a Formal Signature About Dec. 15

By CRAIG R. WHITNEY
Special to The New York Times

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Dec. 2—Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are expected to arrive at a final negotiated peace settlement, substantially along the lines disclosed in October, after “two or three days” of talks in Paris next week, according to informed South Vietnamese sources, close to the negotiations.

The sources said they expected that Mr. Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser, and Mr. Tho, a member of the North Vietnamese politburo, would initial the agreement next week and that the two Governments would sign it formally, perhaps a week later, by about Dec. 15. The sources said that the Vietcong and Saigon would be invited to sign too.

The United States would halt the bombing and mining of North Vietnam in any case, within a few days of the formal signature, the sources said. But the end to hostilities in South Vietnam would depend on Saigon's accession to the accord, the sources said.

American prisoners of war in North Vietnam would begin to be released at Christmas time, with all to be free within 60 days.

What President Nguyen Van Thieu's attitude will be toward the final draft, which is not expected to take his objections into account to any major extent, is not known.

His major objection, reiterated today in the Saigon radio, is to a settlement that does not formally require the withdrawal of all North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam.

Give Account of Meetings

According to the Saigon sources, the agreement will not specify that. But informally, the American-North Vietnamese understanding is that Hanoi will regroup its forces and withdraw substantial numbers of them over a six-to-eight-month period.

Similar reports of an imminent final agreement have circulated before in Saigon, but have turned out to be premature. The South Vietnamese sources say that it is possible things could be delayed again, but gave this account of some of the events at the last series of Kissinger-Tho meetings in Paris from Nov. 20 to 25.

On Nov. 20, Mr. Kissinger met with Mr. Tho and outlined Saigon's objection to the accord: that the provision for a "National Council of Reconciliation and Concord" left

powers would extend into the villages and hamlets as a quasi-governmental body; that there was no provision for a North Vietnamese troop withdrawal; and that the 1954 demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam should be formally re-stored.

On Nov. 21, the two men met again, and this time Mr. Tho presented a list of demands by the Vietcong — the National Liberation Front and the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

The demands were that President Thieu be removed as head of the Saigon Government, that all political prisoners and military detainees in South Vietnam be immediately released, and that the National Council be strengthened to act as the equivalent of a coalition government.

North Vietnam had confined its demands about prisoners to a propaganda campaign urging their release, but had not made it a condition of a cease-fire accord.

The sources here said that Mr. Tho then told Mr. Kissinger:

> "You see, if you insist on raising new objections, we have to start negotiating all over again."

Mr. Kissinger then informed the South Vietnamese of these developments and suggested to the South Vietnamese Ambassador to Washington, Tran Kim Phuong, that the United States would continue negotiating on lesser modifications to the draft, but that perhaps the Saigon Government would want to send a representative to the White House to explain Mr. Thieu's objections to President Nixon.

Mr. Kissinger is said to have made clear to the South Vietnamese the American view that the October draft was the best basis for a negotiated settlement, but to have let them feel free to tell Mr. Nixon, without the interference of intermediaries, how unhappy Saigon was with the settlement.

On Nov. 25th, the talks were recessed, to be reassembled on Monday.

According to the South Vietnamese sources, Mr. Kissinger expects to obtain two modifications of the draft next week.

The first is a slight dilution of the responsibilities of the national council, which in addition to its central powers will not have permanent representation in South Vietnam's hamlets and villages. It is, according to the agreement, to be composed of three segments and to operate on the basis of unanimity.

Also, there will be an informal understanding that the North Vietnamese will withdraw their troops gradually

from this week that Hanoi had also agreed to restore the demilitarized zone and to extend the cease-fire to Laos and Cambodia. This has been strongly denoted by Hanoi.

According to the Soviet Vietnamese sources, Mr. Thieu's secretary and close personal aide, Hoang Duc Kha, was sent to Paris on Nov. 26 to give Mr. Thieu's special envoy, Nguyen Pao Duc, instructions for meetings with Mr. Nixon.

The instructions were, the sources said, to be firm but flexible, implying that even Mr. Thieu recognized that an American-North Vietnamese accord was now inevitable and that he would probably have to go along.

Mr. Duc is expected to return here tomorrow after his consultations in Washington.

The Saigon radio said, today, however, "Suggestions that North Vietnam be allowed to make tacit agreements on the question of troop withdrawal are ridiculous. How can one guarantee observance of a tacit agreement? The North Vietnamese troops must undertake the task of withdrawing from South Vietnam, withdrawing to the last man, expeditly and publicly, on paper."

In another commentary, the radio said: "If the North Vietnamese Communists continue to maintain their stubborn position, they will gain nothing, but will be destroyed by the South Vietnamese people and armed forces."

> "The Hanoi radio's recent broadcasts have urged signature of the accord substantially agreed on by Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Tho in October.

Today, the official party news paper, Nhan Dan, was quoted as attacking the Indonesian government, which has been asked by the United States to serve on a four-power supervisory body after a cease-fire, for its lack of neutrality. The other countries that have been asked —but not by all sides which would be essential—are Canada, Poland and Hungary.

NEW YORK TIMES 3 DECEMBER 1972

## Peace Talks

# Once More
To Paris
With Hope

WASHINGTON—Henry A. Kissinger, seemingly confident that after more than a month's delay peace is really “at hand,” is scheduled to fly to Paris today for what the Administration bills as the final “final” round of negotiations with the North Vietnamese.

Mr. Kissinger, whose original “peace is at hand” statement has grown frayed about the edges, as days turned into weeks without an agreement being reached, has now told his close aides that 95 per cent of the settlement has been achieved. He has asserted that he and Le Duc Tho, Hanoi's top negotiator, can take care of the remaining 5 per cent in a few days. Their talks resume tomorrow.

The question, nevertheless, is: Will President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam go along with new draft?

Although Mr. Thieu continued to make demands of his own, there were reports from Saigon that he now recognized that Washington and Hanoi would complete their negotiations this week—and that he could not risk the loss of American aid by refusing to accede to the final document. There were, to be sure, some skeptics here who doubted that an agreement was as imminent as the White House was suggesting—Christmas time or sooner. But even among the skeptics there were many who expected an accord by Inauguration Day Jan. 20.

Mr. Kissinger has been engaging in intricate three-cornered parleys. Although the United States is a party to the conflict, it has acted more like a mediator than as a participant in the talks. Mr. Kissinger has tried to ensure that the final agreement with Hanoi would be reached at about the same time that Saigon gave its final blessing.

It has been harder to obtain Mr. Thieu's approval of the projected nine-point accord than to get Hanoi to agree to modify the agreement, which was first reached in outline form by Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Tho early in October. Mr. Kissinger and his deputy, Gen. Alexander M. Haig. Jr., have both made trips to Saigon to use their influence on Mr. Thieu. But the South Vietnamese President has been balking.

The settlement would give the Vietcong a legitimate role to play in South Vietnamese political life. North Vietnamese troops would be permitted to remain in the South, pending a lasting political solution between Saigon and the Vietcong. Many Vietnamese observers doubt that such a solution is in the cards. In the circumstances, Mr. Thieu and his supporters—and many of his non-Communist opponents as well—fear that the contemplated accord would leave the Communists in an advantageous political and military position.

Last week President Nixon took a personal hand in the proceedings. He met with Mr. Thieu's special envoy, Nguyen Phu Duc, sent to Washington last month. Mr. Duc spent long hours with the President and Mr. Kissinger. Mr. Nixon, from all accounts, told Mr. Duc that as far as the United States was concerned the war was coming to an end, and that he was personally convinced that the final agreement would not compromise Saigon's interests.

Some changes in the draft accord were, in fact, made during Mr. Kissinger's last negotiations with Mr. Tho to meet Saigon's objections. This is the way the agreement now looks:

* The accord will contain provisions for a cease-fire not only in South and North Vietnam but in neighboring Laos and Cambodia at the same time. The first draft did not provide for a truce in Laos and Cambodia.

* American forces will withdraw from South Vietnam within 60 days of the cease-fire. The force level is down to 27,000; the White House said last week no more troop cuts would be announced pending a final agreement.

* As American troops leave, the North Vietnamese will release all American prisoners captured anywhere in Indochina.

* The North Vietnamese will remove their forces from Laos and Cambodia. Other foreign forces, such as Thai and American, will also leave those countries.

* A National Council of Reconciliation and Concord, composed of Vietcong, Saigon and neutral elements, will help organize elections. The Vietcong and the Saigon Government will establish relations between the areas each side controls.

* The North Vietnamese have agreed to recognize the neutrality of the demilitarized zone separating the two Vietnams, thereby meeting one of Saigon's demands. The original draft did not mention the DMZ.

* The latest Paris session also produced an agreement under which the United States can send Saigon military equipment without regard to the previous limits of one-for-one replacements of worn-out items. This allows the Americans to match any increase in Soviet supplies for North Vietnam.

The questions that remain to be settled in Paris, Administration sources said, include the following:

* A firm understanding on how North Vietnam will withdraw its 145,000 troops in the South. The United States, to meet Saigon's demand for a complete pullout, is seeking a phased demobilization of South Vietnamese and Communist forces. Previously, Hanoi had indicated tacit agreement to remove some forces; further cuts, it said, would have to be negotiated by the Vietcong and Saigon administrations.

* Hanoi apparently has raised anew the question of political prisoners in South Vietnamese jails—seeming to suggest a link between the withdrawal of Communist forces and the release of those prisoners. The earlier draft left the prisoner release to further negotiations between the Vietcong and Saigon.

* Final details on how the international supervisory force should operate remain to be ironed out. The United States wants the team—made up of Canadians, Hungarians, Indonesians and Poles—to be free to travel, check up on reported violations and make its observations public. Hanoi's position is unknown.

—BERNARD GWERTZMAN

WASHINGTON POST 30 November 1972

Why Still No Peace?

On Oct. 26, announcing that "peace is at hand," Henry Kissinger said he believed the United States could wrap up the details of an agreement with North Vietnam in one more negotiating session of three or four days' duration. A month later and after a six-day negotiating session, the talks remain uncompleted. They are to be resumed Dec. 4. What's going on?

Three broad explanations have been offered by observers. One is that on Oct. 26 Mr. Kissinger misstated the peace prospects to aid his chief's election prospects. This we dismiss out of hand as an insult to—among other things—Mr. Nixon's political judgment. A second theory holds that Mr. Nixon, appreciating his adviser's reputation for credibility, tricked him into offering Hanoi certain terms which the President intended all along to weasel on. Not only is there no evidence that this is true, but it misreads, In our judgment, the nature of the working relationship of the two men. No doubt there is a subtle interplay between the Nixon intentions and the Kissinger movements and statements. But, no matter what Hanoi may fear or Saigon hope, we think it is an interplay calculated and controlled by the two principals throughout.

A third possible explanation stems from the likelihood that the Oct. 26 announcement did not so much "end the war" as precipitate an 11th-hour struggle for cease-fire position by the contending Vietnamese. We find this view far and away the most persuasive. By Oct. 26 Washington and Hanoi had agreed in principle to end their fighting against each other. But Washington had not secured Sa

gon's agreement to the particulars, and Hanoi had perhaps not secured the National Liberation Front's. In any event, each Vietnamese party realized it was at that final stage where it could make only one last effort to use the bargaining weight of the American presence for its own advantage. This is why, by the way, President Thieu sent his personal emissary to confer with Mr. Nixon yesterday.

For Saigon, this final stage has meant using the American presence (while it remains) to pry Hanoi's troops out of South Vietnam and to zip closed the DMZ and the old sanctuaries and supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. For Hanoi this has meant offering the United States its prisoners and some kind of political figleaf in South Vietnam—in return for the chance to keep in the South as much military force as possible in order to retain captured territory, to protect Vietcong cadres not in Mr. Thieu's jails and to help free those in the jails. For Hanoi the significance of this effort lies in the huge forces (army, air force, police) Saigon has at its disposal—forces even now being readied for post-cease-fire struggle by quick massive injections of extra American arms and "civilian" advisers.

The principal point is that everyone assumes—we believe correctly—that a settlement will mean two quite different things for the U.S. and for Vietnam. For the U.S. it will mean ending its own combat role and retrieving its prisoners; but for Vietnam it will likely mean continuing the war by other—political/guerrilla—means. It is for advantage in that next stage that, at Paris and on the battlefield, the Vietnamese are now vying.

WASHINGTON POST 3 DECEMBER 1972 (4)

# Vietnam: Ambiguity, Please

By Leslie H. Gelb and Anthony Lake

Gelb is a visiting professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. Lake is currently working on foreign policy books for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations.

PRESIDENT NIXON and Henry Kissinger are facing a genuine dilemma on the Vietnam negotiations. On the one hand, they are committed to a negotiated settlement. And that can be achieved only by agreeing to leave certain key issues (North Vietnamese troop withdrawals and political settlement) ambiguous. Without ambiguity, either Washington or Hanoi would have to admit defeat.

On the other hand, the President and Kissinger want a peace that will not break down quickly and lead to American reinvigilation. That would require a high degree of precision on settlement terms. Without this precision, Hanoi and Saigon soon will set to quarreling and fighting. And reinforcing this latter horn of the dilemma is the desire in the White House to increase the chances of the survival of the Thieu regime.

Thus, no settlement without ambiguity and no "lasting" peace without precision. This is the crux of the negotiating problem today. This is the reason for delay.

Three attention-grabbing issues have obscured this problem from the public's view. Two of these are remnants from the presidential campaign, and the third is one of those issues of Washington gossip that possess the usability to pass for fact.

First, could the same settlement terms have been negotiated in 1969? While we believe that a simple U.S. withdrawal in return for the release of U.S. prisoners would have been negotiable and would have saved three more years of death and suffering, this is not the present point. The October, 1972, agreement, a more comprehensive agreement, was made possible only by new concessions on both sides. Washington finally made explicit its acceptance of a standstill cease-fire which did not require North Vietnamese troop withdrawals from the South. Hanoi relented on a number of matters, including its insistence on a cease-fire only following a political settlement, and a political settlement based on a coalition government and the removal of President Thieu.

In sum, the answer is we probably could not have had the same agreement in 1969—but any improvement in terms has not been worth the awesome cost in lives lost.

Second, was the whole negotiating affair an electioneering fraud foisted on the public by the President? The answer must be no. It was Hanoi, not Washington, which brought the matter to a head with a new proposal in early October. It was Hanoi, not Washington, which first revealed in any detail the terms of agreement that was then reached.

There should be no doubt about the seriousness with which both parties treated the exercise. Of course, the breakthrough was tied to the November elections — but more on Hanoi's side when faced with the prospect of another four years of Mr. Nixon than on Mr.

Nixon's efforts to find a substitute for Watergate.

Third, is there a Nixon-Kissinger split on what to do? According to the gossip Nixon feels he has Hanoi on the rope and now wants to drive a harder bargain than he got with the October accords. Kissinger supposedly is willing to push hard, but at less risk of losing what he has already accomplished. Few know whether the gossip is true or false, but whichever, it is of little consequence. The operational result is the same. Kissinger returns again to Paris tomorrow not merely to dot the i's and cross the t's, but as part of an effort to reopen the basic terms of agreement.

## Endangering the Accords

IN OTHER WORDS, the United States position has moved from acceptance of ambiguity to pressing for greater precision. This is documentable on the public record. At his Oct. 26 briefing, Kissinger struck the ambiguity theme by calling the arrangement "a compromise settlement in which neither side achieves everything, and in which both parties have the necessity of posturing themselves for their constituency." On Oct. 31, the President began the move to precision when he said he would not be rushed into an agreement that did not offer "the best hope for a lasting peace." Then, on Nov. 2, Mr. Nixon drove the point home: "There are still some provisions of the agreement which must be clarified so that all ambiguities will be removed."

In the process of moving from one horn of the dilemma to the other, the President is endangering the October accords. Both sides are stepping up military activities. Washington has flooded South Vietnam with massive new military equipment. There is evidence that Hanoi has instructed its forces to take advantage of the period between an agreement and the actual cease-fire to launch a series of attacks in the South. Since late October, Thieu has been jailing "suspect Communists" at the rate of hundreds daily.

Negotiating positions are hardening all around. Saigon is insisting, for example, on total and explicit North Vietnamese troop withdrawal from South Vietnam, not just an understanding on partial withdrawals. It wants to see the proposed National Council of Reconciliation and Concord stripped of any power at all.

Washington seems to be supporting the thrust of Saigon's claims, although it is unclear how far it is pressing them. And, according to reports, Hanoi has refused to become less ambiguous on these points. Indeed, it has hard-

ened its terms on other issues. For example, Hanoi now seeks the release of its political supporters in Thieu's Jails at the same time it returns the Americans it holds captive—a point not previously covered, and a terribly sticky point, since Thieu would then hold the key to the release of U.S. POWs and have an interest in not using it.

The American effort to bring about greater precision serves several purposes. It is a way to keep Thieu happy, or make him less unhappy, by tilting the terms of agreement more in his favor. If Thieu is screaming about an American sellout, it may spark some serious questioning of the agreement—particularly from the American right wing, but also by those who find in

stinctive pleasure in criticizing anything this administration does. It is also a way of narrowing the chances that any near-term disruption of the agreement by either or both Saigon and Hanoi will necessitate U.S. military reintervention. The period of maximum danger of reinvigilation is the first two years after the agreement. During this period, the President may still feel that American prestige and responsibility remain committed to enforcing the settlement.

## Ambiguity Is the Price

MANY WOULD ARGUE that these purposes are worthy ones. But we should face the fact that whatever our desires for precision, there must and will be important ambiguities in a Vietnam agreement—if there is to be one. Indeed, all Americans should welcome an agreement that is ambiguous on some key points. The imprecision is the price of agreement.

Why? The reason is that there are two kinds of negotiations. One, for example on arms control, involves identifying mutual interests; a high degree of precision is then possible. The other, like the Vietnam negotiations, seeks to strike a balance between interests which are in irreconcilable conflict. Hanoi still seeks the eventual reunification of Vietnam, that is, the completion of the Vietminh revolution of the late 1940s. The Saigon government remains unalterably opposed.

It seems to be a law of diplomacy that in such cases, successful negotiations depend on agreement about carefully devised ambiguities. Any Vietnam agreement which both sides can countenance will have to provide each with some chance for gaining its ends. Indeed, each would want to be able to interpret an agreement as giving it a better than even chance of ultimate success, or it won't go along. Hence, the necessity of ambiguity about the future.

This means that Hanoi must insist, at the least, on retaining some measure of imprecision on such key questions as the status of its forces now in the South and the future of the political process there. Anything less would be surrender. While Kissinger may gain some concessions on these or other points (such as a simultaneous Indochina-wide cease-fire and the reinstitution of the DMZ), he will get no iron-clad understanding on the troop withdrawal and political issues. So the "right" agreement on which the President is insisting may not be negotiable. An effort to achieve the "best" may be the enemy of what is good and achievable.

## Some of Both

THUS, THE administration, Saigon and Hanoi should make sure that in their negotiating minuet they do not allow their bargaining on precise terms to destroy the chances for agreement itself. For an agreement such as that worked out in October is in the interests of all concerned

It gets the United States out of a barbaric war. It gets Hanoi out from under American bombs and the diplomatic pressures of Peking and Moscow, while leaving the future open. And it is the best negotiated agreement that Saigon is likely to get.

Sal's interest is admittedly at variance with that of the United States and North Vietnam: It would prefer no agreement at all and continued military protection by massive U.S. military forces. But such protection is not in the cards, and an agreement that leaves the future uncertain is better than no agreement and no protection.

In short, in this "final" effort to achieve precise agreement, the President should not risk what is already accomplished by attempting to achieve more than is possible. He cannot escape from the dilemma between the necessity for ambiguity and the benefits of precision. He will have to settle for some of both. In pressing too hard for a "lasting peace," he could risk getting no peace at all.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

5 DECEMBER 1972

The Peace That Comes

By VERMONT ROWSTER

Like everyone else I have been following the peace negotiations with a sort of hypnotic fascination. Days of hope, days of gloom. When Henry Kissinger has smiled, we have smiled with him; peace was at hand. When he has turned solemn, we have been solemn with him; peace was not at hand.

So you might suppose that when the peace
docs finally come, when at last the fighting
has stopped and the prisoners are free, every-
body would cheer. But I'm beginning to sus-
pect that not everybody will; or more accur-
ately, that we will hear hoo-mingled with the
cheers. Everybody wants peace. A lot of peo-
ple aren't going to like the peace that comes.

Saigon obviously isn't going to like it be-
cause many of the people there, and espe-
cially the officials and others who have led
the resistance, will wonder about their future
under the terms of the agreement; some will
wonder about their lives. Hanoi won't really
like it either, because after all the blood
they've shed they won't have conquered South
Vietnam, and the peace-or call it armis-
tice-will be an acknowledgement of their
military failure.

Certainly those here at home who believed
that there was good reason for the United
States to help South Vietnam stand up to
Communist aggression won't like it. They will
say there's no substitute for victory, fearing
that in the end the Communists will win politi-
cally, or through subversion, what they could
not win militarily. And if that happens, they'll
stand ready to say, "We told you so."

Even many who have cried longest and
loudest that we should get out aren't going to
like it either, judging by the comments I've
already read and the conversations I've al-
ready heard.

Some will lament that it comes too late.
Others will complain that we let ourselves be
out-bargained just to save President Thieu, or
for something called the honor of the United
States, neither of which they think worth a
day's delay. There will be a few to say that
President Nixon has handled the whole thing
badly, that Senator McGovern could have got-
ten us a better peace.

In a strange sort of way those who have
spent their emotions decrying our involve-
ment in Vietnam have, by the very intensity
of those emotions, acquired almost, as much
of a vested interest in the war as those who
on principle have supported our involvement.
When there is no more American war, and
therefore no more battles for them to wage
against it, they will suffer that letdown that
comes with all passion spent.

So it is quite possible that we are in for a
period of dispute and recriminations about
the peace obtained, however devoutly it was
wished. Once the euphoria has passed, people
will start looking at the terms of the agree-
ment, point by point, and finding no lack of
things to regret, to prefer otherwise, to dis-
pute.

So it has been, anyway, with our other
wars of this century, even those won on the
fighting fields. After World War I the ink was
hardly dry on the Treaty of Versailles before
men were disputing its terms or warning

about the consequences of the peace. W
War II, which was ended with all our enem-
confounded, was followed by bitter recrim-
tions over the peace, which are not yet end-
ed.

Indeed, the arrangements made at the end
of World War II have contributed mightily to
the war-threatening troubles of the past gen-
eration. These include the division of Europe
by the Iron Curtain, particularly the partition
of Germany and the festering sore of Berlin,
and the great schism of China symbolized by
Chairman Mao and Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek. The latter has affected all Asia and
contributed to the later wars in Korea and
Vietnam.

If the arrangements after a "successful"
war caused so many disputes, why should we
expect the aftermath of an indecisive one to
be either less troublesome or disputatious?

Consider: Whatever the details, the agree-
ment will leave the Saigon government as the
recognized government of South Vietnam, at
least for the time being. This will be anath-
ema to those in this country who have no use
for President Thieu, considering his regime
"undemocratic" and seemingly disregarding
the worse authoritarianism of Hanoi.

The agreement will also leave the North
Vietnamese and the Viet Cong in occupation
of a considerable part of South Vietnam, leav-
ing them also in an excellent position to con-
tinue their efforts at conquest by other
means. The only people this will satisfy will
be those who think we should turn over South
Vietnam to North Vietnam and be done with
it.

Thus the prospect that the backlash will
come from both directions. Millions of Ameri-
cans, be they hawks or doves, will view such
a conclusion and ask themselves to what pur-
pose nearly 50,000 Americans died. What was
the point of it all?

Already this is being translated into re-
criminations here at home. We have all for-
gotten that it was Hanoi, not Saigon, that
started the war in the first place, that when
we first intervened a decade ago the country
as a whole approved, that those who now cry
shame then cried for action. Now we must
have villains. Who shall they be, Kennedy or
Johnson? Rusk, MacNamara, the generals?
Or, perhaps, Richard Nixon, who if he did not
get us in, did not get us out in four years
either?

So it is, that as that long, dreary and
tragic war ends not with a bang but with a
whimper, there are going to be many at the
ending of it who will carp, cavil and criticize
because, one way or other, the terms of the
peace don't suit them.

As for myself, I shall try to be an excep-
tion. Whatever we may feel now, there was
nothing dishonorable in the intent of this
country to prevent, if it could, naked agres-
sion from swallowing up a small country, de-
fenseless as South Vietnam then was. But it
was a blunder for this country not to recog-
nize the limitations of its power, not to heed
those few who questioned not the motives but
the wisdom of plunging into the morass of
Asia.

The conscience of that blunder was more
than military failure. It tore apart our own
country. And to repair that, almost any terms
are better than none, any regrets better than
more tortures.

So I am not going to quibble over whether
it could have been ended earlier, whether we
have made a good or poor bargain, nor think
it important whether it pleases the hawks or
the doves. I am just going to be happy when it
is all over.

422

NEW YORK TIMES 5 DECEMBER 197

Vietnam: A Lesson From History

By O. Edmund Clubb

Presidential adviser, Henry A. Hurley, flies to Paris, to Saigon, to Paris, and always back to Washington, saying, "peace, peace," when there is no peace. The war in Indonesia goes on, for there can finally be only one victor and one vanquished force in that struggle, and neither yet concedes defeat.

To judge the potential for the future, reference to historical example can be instructive. In November, 1944, Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Hurley, intervening to effect a peaceful compromise between the Nationalists and Communists in China, worked out together with the Communist leaders at Yenan a draft agreement that provided pro forma for unification of all Chinese military forces for the war against Japan, and also for recognition of a legal status for the Chinese Communist party and for creation of a coalition government. Hurley thought the plan good, and confidently submitted it to the Nationalists at Chungking, only to be rebuffed. Chiang Kai-shek would consent to no coalition government, to no infringement of his autocratic power.

In January 1946 the successor to Hurley, General George C. Marshall, was instrumental in bringing the war-rising Chinese Nationalists and Communists together in a cease-fire arrangement, to be implemented by a tripartite (Nationalist, Communist, American) executive headquarters set up in Peking. It was provided that "All hostilities will cease immediately." However, hostilities resumed in full fury six months later; and in the end the Communists won.

The agreement reached in October 1972, between Mr. Kissinger and Hanoi's Le Duc Tho proposed in general a resolution of the military aspect of the Vietnam embrolio. On its face, it.

gave the Nguyen Van Thieu regime Saigon, with its million-man army, a long-prescribed "reasonable chance survival." But in essence, by recognizing the National Liberation Front's political existence and its right to share in determination of South Vietnam's future through participation in "free and democratic elections," and by stipulating a cease-fire in place operative with respect to North Vietnamese as well as N.L.F. forces, it projected fundamental changes in the political structure of South Vietnam.

President Thieu has made it abundantly clear all along that he has no interest in a "compromise" settlement that would give adversaries equal opportunity of political (or military) contest. Mr. Thieu knows well how to exploit the tactical vulnerability of the nation that poses as savior of peoples "menaced by Communism." He quite naturally turned thumbs down on the agreement, and now demands in effect that the United States remain engaged until there might be achieved a political settlement that would consolidate, not eliminate, his dictatorship. That, he would say, using President Nixon's term, would be a settlement that was "right."

Washington confronts a compound dilemma. Whose war? Thieu says that it is ours, for did we not choose to combat "Communist aggression" in the first instance? Whose the future peace? Thieu says that it must be his, for it is not South Vietnam, by American definition, a sovereign state? Washington is not to be permitted to "impose" a settlement.

It remains to be seen whether the Nixon Administration will enter upon a compromise agreement with Hanoi in defiance of the Saigon autocrat's veto. On the other hand, it can be anticipated that Hanoi and the N.L.F. will not make the surrender demanded by Thieu. They don't have to. For continuation of the war progressively weakens further the political and economic fabric of South Vietnam, and by that much nurtures revolution; whereas if the military action stops, and the revolutionaries are accorded a legitimate political role, both principle and practice of dictatorship will have been undermined, in South Vietnam and in Cambodia and Laos. In war or in peace, the revolutionaries stand to win in Indochina.

The big question at this critical juncture is whether the United States will in fact permit the Indochinese peoples to determine their own political destiny, even a revolutionary destiny, or whether it will continue fighting anti-insurrectionary wars in service of the petty dictatorships it has cultivated in Saigon, Pnompenh and Vientiane.

O. Edmund Clubb is author of "China and Russia: The Great Game."

NEW YORK TIMES 6 DECEMBER 1972

# The View From Hanoi

By Tom Hayden

HANOI, North Vietnam—There is growing skepticism in North Vietnam about Washington's willingness to sign the nine-point peace agreement—or to implement it, if signed.

I found in my third trip here since 1965 that the peace agreement is viewed as a major step forward in a long struggle against American intervention in the South. Since they wrote and proposed the agreement themselves, it can be assumed that Hanoi's leadership finds the accords favorable.

In substance, indeed, the agreement represents more of the Hanoi-N.L.F. position than that of Washington or Saigon. Complete U.S. military withdrawal, agreement, on the principle of a three-segment administration in the South, recognition of the unity of Vietnam: these points embody the long-standing demands for an end to U.S. involvement and for self-determination, after eighteen years of a U.S.-dominated regime in Saigon. Compared to Geneva in 1954, when they had to demobilize their armed forces and enter into a political process organized by the U.S.-Diem regime, the Vietnamese view these pending accords as a major victory.

They consider the agreement part of their "military, political and diplomatic" offensive which began in March with battles in Quangtri Province. Even by Western press accounts, they have destroyed more than half the conventional armed forces of Saigon, and the spectacular desertion rate of that army has jumped by 50 per cent to 22,500 per month since August.

The liberation forces control virtually all the countryside and contend there are even greater military moves to come if the agreement is not achieved.

The issue for the Vietnamese revolutionaries is how to win the cities, where four million people live, perhaps a million of them "middle class" with fears of Communism, the rest impoverished and without civil liberties. If the forces of the Provisional Revolutionary Government were to attack Saigon, the U.S. probably would bomb and kill tens of thousands of people. If President Thieu was assassinated, the U.S. would likely replace him with a new dictator. If urban demonstrations were attempted, as in Danang in May, Thieu's response would be more of the same brutal repression which has taken 15,000 people monthly since May, including most of the urban opposition groupings.

The agreement contains a solution to this problem from the Hanoi-P.R.G. viewpoint: a period of guaranteed political struggle in the cities after the U.S. departs. With the U.S. military power gone, they feel, Thieu would find it hard to continue police and military repression in the face of a popular desire for peace.

Given their position of strength, the Vietnamese believe they can modify their insistence on an immediate coalition government in the South. Instead, believing they have defeated Vietnamization through their offensive, they propose to allow the weakened Saigon regime to exist until after its U.S. military support is withdrawn, giving Henry Kissinger the "fig leaf" or "decent interval" he has so long

desired to cover a U.S. departure.

This outlook is entirely different from that of Washington, and this is why the agreement may be delayed to the point of collapse. President Nixon confuses damage with defeat. In pounding Vietnam's cities to rubble, making refugees of millions, he thinks Hanoi's war-making capability has been broken.

He is even more liable to think so when the terms of the other side become more conciliatory or appear to be compromised. The tendency is to confuse Hanoi's flexibility with weakness, then to intensify military escalation instead of taking the opportunity to negotiate.

If the illusion persists, the war will continue and, as the 1976 elections approach, will become a heavier burden for the incumbent government.

Mr. Nixon must know how badly hurt his allies have been, but seems to believe his enemies have been hurt even more. Therefore the President may feel that Hanoi has to have the agreement, but he wants to delay signing in order to rebuild "Vietnamization" or obtain a guarantee that Thieu can rule for four more years. But if Vietnamese will certainly not allow the rebuilding of the same "Vietnamization" apparatus which they have shed so much blood to destroy this year. Mr. Nixon cannot have the agreement and Vietnamization as well. If he thinks he can, he will either lose the agreement or, signing it, have to resume the bombing when the Saigon regime begins to collapse afterwards. He can only have the agreement work if he wants a face-saving retreat from Indochina.

Tom Hayden is a member of the Indo-china Peace Campaign. He spent ten days in North Vietnam in mid-Novem-ber

5-F

NEW YORK TIMES

7 December 1972 (8)

An Imperfect Peace

Reports from Washington and Saigon that the North Vietnamese are planning to hide much of their army in South Vietnam in Vietcong units after a cease-fire should come as no surprise. It is only to be expected—they agree to pull out their troops in the first place, which is not yet certain.

There is no use pretending that the agreement that Henry Kissinger has been trying to hammer into final form in Paris is likely to produce lasting peace. It can hardly do so since it fails to provide a workable formula for resolving the political issues which lie at the heart of the long Vietnamese conflict. While President Nixon and his foreign policy aide talk of peace, both sides in Vietnam are frantically making preparations to pursue the struggle.

President Thieu has made clear his intention to crack down harshly on Communist activities in the country after any armistice, threatening imprisonment or death to Communist agents. He has moved to extend military control over the Government down to the lowest level in the hamlets.

It would be naive to assume that the Communists do not have plans of their own for continuing the fight, once the remaining American forces are gone. If the settlement does not permit North Vietnamese troops to remain in their present unacknowledged positions, it is inevitable that many will simply melt into the South Vietnamese countryside, as they have done in the past. Such a dispersal, or even fresh infiltration through the porous Laotian and Cambodian borders would be virtually impossible to police. This is one reason why Canada and Indonesia are so reluctant to join the proposed international commission to supervise the cease-fire.

One can hope that the Vietnamese, left to their own devices, will soon find a way to reach an accommodation that will finally end decades of bloodshed. But it is too much to expect a tidy end to a messy war.

About the best that Mr. Kissinger can hope to achieve is a period of grace in which to extricate remaining American troops and prisoners from the conflict. For that the American people would be thankful. They should not be misled to expect much more.

BALTIMORE SUN 12 DECEMBER 1972

Peace Not Quite at Hand

After yet another brief surge of optimism, it now appears that the secret talks between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho have made no substantive progress since they were resumed more than a week ago. Discussions on major matters have been what is described as "purely academic," though it is said that neither side shows any indication of wanting right now to break them off.

Meanwhile groups of technicians are reportedly hard at work trying to draw on maps the precise positions for a possible standstill cease-fire; which areas would be controlled by which side. It is of course an immense task, considering the leopard-spot condition of the Vietnamese military situation charts. But this is work that would have

to be done in any case, and does not suggest that decisions on the major points of contention are necessarily much closer than they were ten days, or for that matter a few weeks, ago.

Someone identified as "prominent sources close to the negotiations" or "extremely well-informed sources" or simply as "an American spokesman" sees the picture as a "war of attrition at the negotiating table instead of on the battlefield," and says that it's really a question of who has the solidest nerves. But of course that has always been one of the big questions, since the start of any discussions at all.

Perhaps, after all, the appearance of a deadlock is a false appearance.

Perhaps in fact the final stage of a cease-fire agreement is at hand. But even this is not to say real peace is at hand, as we were told a good while back that it was. The preparations of both sides for continued struggle under a different guise argue otherwise. And, meanwhile again, it is not true that the war of attrition has moved from the battlefield, as the bombing statistics alone suffice to show.

Whatever happens in Paris, privately or publicly, genuine peace, in the sense of amity and accommodation, is a long way off in Vietnam. The thing to hope for today is that negotiations will not in the event come to the point of deadlock, and that they will have proved to be a significant step toward an ultimate real peace.

WASHINGTON POST 13 DECEMBER 1972

# 'Outlines of a New American Presence in Vietnam'

YOU CAN ALMOST hear a national of relief that we are nearing the of our road in Vietnam. But, an

agreement in Paris will only mean, in fact, that we have arrived at a new crossroad: Will we take this great opportunity to declare peace and get out of Vietnam? Or will we find ways to stay in, and go on down the old road of support for Saigon?

The approach of a cease-fire agreement is setting off alarm bells all over Vietnam. They are warning that a cease-fire will not bring peace, but a new phase of the old struggle. Both Vietnamese sides are girding for the coming contest.

This alarm has also been heard in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Mission in Vietnam. Evidence mounts that they are preparing to maintain an active commitment to the Thieu regime.

So once again the Executive Branch government is deciding for us which and we shall take, without the constraint of national debate. And there is no sign that alarms about U.S. post-cease-fire policies are ready to go off in the Congress.

While all eyes are on Paris, here is what reliable news sources say is going on in Vietnam:

Hanoi and its Southern allies are taking a number of steps to continue the struggle. North Vietnamese troops may be folded into Vietcong units to disguise their presence. These units have been issued orders to rely more heavily on captured American weapons, so that they as well as the Saigon regime can live off American supplies —as they did in the late '50s and early '60s.

The Saigon government has been making wholesale arrests of any and all "suspected Vietcong." Thieu's administrative cadres are touring the countryside to speed preparations against a new outbreak of Communist political and quasi-military activity. A massive influx of American arms is being distributed.

Meanwhile, U.S. planners are putting together the outlines of a new American presence in Vietnam to support the Saigon government after our troops have left. It reportedly would include:

* Ten thousand American civilian technicians and advisors, many under U.S. Defense Department contracts, to work with Saigon's armed forces. (Advertisements for these jobs have been placed in English language newspapers in Saigon, presumably to recruit retiring U.S. military personnel);

* Possibly hundreds of military attacks assigned to the Embassy;

* Four consulate generals, to replace existing regional U.S. headquarters.

* Advisory teams at the province level as well;

* One thousand A.I.D. personnel;

* One hundred Vietnamese or French-speaking Foreign Service Officers on temporary reassignment to Vietnam, reporting on the situation in the countryside;

* And a large-scale military aid program, if the U.S. succeeds in removing the requirement of the October agreement that military resupply take place only on a one-for-one basis.

In short, the United States is gearing up to do all it can for Thieu, except for the direct use of American military forces.

It may seem natural that Washington would want to take what steps it can after a cease-fire to improve Thieu's chances for survival. After all, many will argue, why not make some new, fairly marginal investments in the situation, since we have done so much in the past? Why not go this one last mile, when we have worked so long in Saigon's behalf?

The danger is that maintaining a large American presence in Vietnam gives a hostage to the future. Thieu would then have less incentive to reach an accommodation with the Vietcong, so the fighting would flare up at some point—raising the issue of American military involvement. American aircraft will still be poised on off-shore carriers and at bases in Thailand to come to Thieu's rescue. When the President is faced with a decision to send the bombers back over Indochina, the presence of so many Americans in Vietnam could tip the odds towards military involvement. We would then be back to where we are today.

In the past, the Congress has sometimes supported and sometimes criticized the President for his decisions about Vietnam. It has never anticipated them. If the Congress does not move to help shape future Vietnam policies now, it can have no one to blame but itself if things go wrong later.

The first order of business for the

next Congress should be to hold hearings, in the House and in the Senate, on what is going on in Indochina. The problem will not be the terms of the peace agreement, but the actions our government is taking within the context of the agreement. The congressional committees need to ask such questions as: Are we still obliged to commit American forces to Thieu's defense or the defense of any other anti-Communist regime in Saigon? What safeguards can the Congress legislate to prevent American military involvement before it becomes an accomplished fact? Who is paying the bill for the American civilians attached to the South Vietnamese armed forces? What exactly will all of those U.S. military attaches be doing? Are the President's powers as commander-in-chief sufficient to order U.S. military forces to intervene for the protection of these Americans in Vietnam?

If we have learned anything at all from our decade of tragedy in Vietnam, it is that we ought to ask such questions before we proceed, not after. We should know by now that if anything can be wrong in Vietnam, it will.

By FOX BUTTERFIELD
Special to The New York Times

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Dec. 12—President Nguyen Van Thieu's call for a Christmas truce and an exchange of prisoners left many South Vietnamese and American officials today with the impression that Mr. Thieu was once more to forestall a cease-fire he dislikes by offering new terms of his own.

But in his rambling and often imprecise speech to the National Assembly, President Thieu did not specifically reject the peace settlement worked out by Hanoi and Washington. And some experienced Vietnamese politicians felt they even detected a subtle signal that Mr. Thieu is now ready to accede reluctantly to an agreement that he realizes he cannot stop.

Whatever Mr. Thieu meant—and there were almost as many interpretations in Saigon as there were listeners—most knowledgeable diplomats felt that in any case the speech would probably have little effect on the secret talks in Paris.

## Smile and Forget

"The negotiators will smile and shake their heads and tomorrow the speech will all be forgotten," remarked one diplomat who believes that a settlement in Paris is imminent.

The 55-minute address in the squat, white Senate building on the bank of the Saigon River came to be divided into two: one part: a tough, hard- summary of South Vietnam's objections to the draft peace accord, and a conciliatory proposal at the very end calling for a truce and exchange of prisoners.

The tough language was widely believed to be for domestic consumption, while the offer of a truce, to begin before Christmas and extend to New Year's, with the possibility of being continued indefinitely, was designed to show Americans that Mr. Thieu was not the obstacle to peace. Significantly, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry had prepared an English translation of only the conciliatory section.

## P.O.W. Release Offered

"To show its utmost goodwill," President Thieu said, "the Republic of Vietnam will unilaterally release 1,015 North Vietnamese disabled and healthy prisoners of war on the first day of the truce." And to help secure the release of American prisoners, he added, Saigon would be willing to free all North Vietnamese military prisoners if Hanoi responded. He made no mention of political prisoners, whose release the Communists have been demanding.

With the truce and the change of military prisoners, Mr. Thieu called for "consultations to discuss every problem of mutual concern" between Saigon, Hanoi and the National Liberation Front.

Since his proposal did not call for withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam—long Saigon's chief demand in the Paris talks—some Vietnamese saw it as a major concession indicating that Mr. Thieu would accede to the draft agreement.

But others here felt that Mr. Thieu's offer was irrelevant, coming as it did after most major points had apparently already been agreed on in Paris. They viewed the proposal as only an attempt to sidetrack the current negotiations.

## Delaying Action Seen

"It's a delaying tactic again," said Tran Van Tuyen, a leading Opposition deputy. "Thieu is saying yes and no at the same time. His proposals will raise a whole lot of new questions, but I'm afraid it is now already too late for this stalling tactic to work."

In two speeches at the end of October President Thieu had similarly left his audience uncertain about his exact position by making vague, contradictory statements and by introducing new peace proposals. In one speech for example, on Oct. 27 at the Presidential Palace, Mr. Thieu suggested a referendum sponsored by the United Nations to determine the future composition of the government in Saigon, a proposal to which he alluded again today.

Mr. Thieu, dressed in a dark blue business suit, spent most of his time today attacking the proposed peace accord.

"After forcing us to sign this agreement and after achieving the so-called expulsion of Americans from Vietnam," he said, "the annexation of South Vietnam through military means will be only a question of time."

Mr. Thieu repeatedly referred to what he termed the "two life-and-death issues" for South Vietnam, namely that all North Vietnamese troops must be withdrawn from the South, and that the proposed National Council of Reconciliation and Concord would impose "a disguished coalition government" on Saigon.

## 'Cunning, Crafty Trick'

He charged that the draft accord left both of these issues unresolved, and he called the settlement a "cunning, crafty trick."

But Mr. Thieu never said South Vietnam would not accept the accord. He appeared to be trapped by his continuing dependence on the United States, and by his knowledge that if he finally rejected the peace agreement, he might stand to lose his sole source of support.

Thus some Vietnamese reasoned, Mr. Thieu threw up a torrent of criticism of the accord to give vent to his own feelings but stopped short of a rejection.

"He shouted no, but he whispered yes," one Vietnamese politician remarked.

President Thieu did not announce a change in his Cabinet today, as many people had expected him to, but the official Vietnam Press Bulletin disclosed that Mr. Thieu's new secret political party, the Democracy Party, would be made public this week.

This party, which reportedly has over 100,000 members, includes almost all province, district, village and hamlet officials. It is the instrument Mr. Thieu hopes will enable him to compete with the Communists after a cease-fire.

NEW YORK TIMES 13 DECEMBER 1972

# Thieu's Speech Is Viewed As Bid for Better Terms

427

NEW YORK TIMES - 13 DECEMBER 1972 P-1

# Thieu's Sovereignty Bid Is Key Issue In Peace Talks

By JAMES RESTON

Special to The New York Times

PARIS, Wednesday, Dec. 13

—The current phase of the
 Vietnam peace negotiations is
 going to an end here with
 one difficult unresolved ques-
tion.

The issue is President Nguyen
Van Thieu's insistence that any
cease-fire agreement state un-
equivocally that the Saigon
Government has the sole sov-
erign right to control all the
territory it held before the Viet-
nam war began.

According to responsible offi-
cials, Mr. Thieu has agreed that,
if North Vietnamese troops are
permitted to remain in South
Vietnam under the cease-fire
agreement, it must be made
clear that they are there il-
legally, and that their presence
in no way implies any diminu-
tion of the Saigon regime's
sovereign rights.

## Opposed in Principle

It is understood that the
South Vietnamese National Libi-
eration Front, or Vietcong, op-
poses any such statement of
principle, and that it has been
supported in this stand by the
government of North Vietnam's
Henry A. Kissinger met for
four and a half hours yesterday
with Le Duc Tho, the chief
North Vietnamese negotiator. It
was their seventh meeting in
the current bargaining round
here and the 14th since they re-
opened discussions of the draft
cease-fire agreement that was
drawn up in October.

Mr. Kissinger, who is Presi-
dent Nixon's national security
adviser, and Mr. Tho met, with
their staffs, during the after-
noon at Gif-sur-Yvette, a sub-
urb southwest of Paris. During
the morning there were two
concurrent sessions of technical
experts from the two sides.

## Meeting Planned Today

One more negotiating session
was scheduled later this morn-
ing here. But unless there is
then some unforeseen new con-
cession by Saigon or Hanoi on
the critical issue, Mr. Kissinger
is now expected to fly to Wash-
ington tonight to report to Mr.
Nixon on this latest phase of
the Paris talks.

Thereafter, it is expected that
Mr. Kissinger, or perhaps some
other Presidential envoy—in
view of the Saigon regime's re-
cent public attacks on Mr. Kis-
singer—will go to South Viet-
nam in a final effort to per-
mit President Thieu to sign
the cease-fire agreement and

void a separate peace between
Washington on the one hand
and Hanoi and the Vietcong on
the other.

So far as is known here,
President Nixon has not told
President Thieu in so many
words that he is now prepared
to sign the agreement, with or
without Mr. Thieu's signature.

These are some points other
than the sovereignty issue to
be settled. For example, the
question of a simultaneous
cease-fire in Laos has appar-
ently been resolved in the last
few days, but the question of
a simultaneous cease-fire in
Cambodia is still unresolved
and will take more negotiation
and help from the Peking Gov-
ernment.

President Nixon has hesi-
tated to tell Mr. Thieu that he
would reach a settlement by
a specified date, partly because
his political opponents have in-
sisted all along that he would
never get the cooperation of
the Saigon regime unless he
did, but also partly because
he prefers to get as clear a
cease-fire accord as possible to
avoid misunderstandings later.

Nevertheless, even since Mr.
Kissinger announced late in Oc-
tober that "peace is at hand,"
the implication has been clear
that the United States intended
to sign roughly on the basis of
the truce terms announced by
Hanoi and confirmed by Mr.
Kissinger at that time. These
would be subject only to clear-
ing up certain technicalities,
and the issue of sovereignty
was not one of those techni-
calities then and is not described
as one of them now.

In short, the impression here
is that the United States Gov-
ernment, while it would have
preferred that the sovereignty
issue not be raised, recognizes
the merits of the argument on
both sides. It insists, however,
that this is an issue to be set-
tled later by the Vietnamese
and is not a matter that, if un-
resolved, would justify the Uni-
ted States in carrying on the
war.

The United States, then, is
not bound by the calendar on
the question. But at the same
time it is making clear to the
South Vietnamese that it will
not give them a veto on Wash-
ington's making a separate
peace, if necessary.

## Prisoners' Return Is Factor

Officials here are leaving the
impression that, at best, Wash-
ington wants a cease-fire and
at least some prisoners of war
home by Christmas, while, at
worst, it wants a settlement,
alone if necessary, by Jan. 20,
so that President Nixon will not
go into his second term with the
Vietnam war still in progress.

The current phase of the
talks here has apparently been

very tough. The negotiations
have been very tiring for all
concerned, so much so that a
pause was agreed upon for last
weekend to give everyone time
to rest and to allow Saigon
and Hanoi time to reconsider.
But when the talks resumed
with the long session yesterday
afternoon, there was no chance
in either side's position on the
sovereignty issue.

It is understood that Mr. Kiss-
singer's position was that the
issue of sovereignty was one,
to be settled by the Vietnamese
themselves and not by the
United States. Militarily, North
Vietnamese forces control a part
of northern South Vietnam.
Along with their Vietcong allies,
they also hold various areas
much closer to Saigon.

President Thieu's insistence
on the principle of sovereign
control of all South Vietnamese
territory is understood by
Washington, but the basis of
the United States' compromise
cease-fire draft agreement was
that it should be a cease-fire in
place, with both sides holding
the territory they had won or
held on the battlefield. The
question of sovereignty was to
be settled later.

## Compromise Plans Rejected

It is also known that Wash-
ington instructed Mr. Kiss-
inger to propose several compromise
formulas to resolve this im-
passe. But after weeks of dis-
putation, it became what Mr.
Kissinger is said to have re-
garded as an "almost theologi-
cal dispute" between the North
Vietnamese and South Vietnam-
ese.

The United States has stressed
to the South Vietnamese that
an enduring peace depends not
on a few words on paper pro-
claiming Saigon's legal claim to
territory in possession of the
North Vietnamese but on more
practical considerations.

For example, it is understood
that the draft cease-fire agree-
ment states that while armas-
ments can be replaced on both
sides, military personnel can-
not be replaced.

Accordingly, it is assumed by
the United States that, if Hanoi
keeps the agreement as it now
stands, it will eventually have
to reduce the number of men
it now has in South Vietnam.
Conversely, if Hanoi does not
keep the truce agreement—even
the part of it that Saigon is
willing to accept—no clause in
the cease-fire will actually
"guarantee" Saigon's "sov-
erignty."

## Terms Acceptable to U.S.

As to Washington's position,
it is emphasized by United
States officials in Paris that the
United States has been offering
for months to agree to a cease-
fire without insisting on the
withdrawal of North Vietnam-
ese troops or without mention-
ing the question of Saigon's
sovereign rights over territory
in the hands of the North Viet-
namese.

The debate goes on, but the
impression here is that Wash-
ington will not let it run on
indefinitely on the sovereignty
issue without agreeing to sign
however reluctantly, without
President Thieu if necessary.

The negotiating session yes-
terday began with concurrent
meetings in suburban Neustadt,
at a villa used by the Ameri-
cans, and at Choisy-le-Roi in a
villa used by the North Viet-
namese. Participating in the
higher-level meeting, at Neustadt,
were William J. Porter, the
United States representative at
the formal Vietnam peace con-
ference here, who until yester-
day had not been a participant
in the secret talks, and William
H. Sullivan, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State.

Xuan Thuy and Deputy For-
eign Minister Nguyen Co Tzuch
represented North Vietnam. The
group worked for four hours.

Unexpectedly, Mr. Kissinger
joined them about half an hour
before they broke up to drive
to Gif-sur-Yvette for the full
meeting. The United States
team that had attended the
other morning session also
turned up unexpectedly at the
least minute, and had to wait
some time before the villa's
high garden gate was opened.

That team, composed of four
members of Mr. Kissinger's
National Security Council, had
been meeting with ten
of Hanoi's experts at Choisy-
le-Roi in a villa used by the
North Vietnamese. Two of the
Americans involved are Viet-
namese language experts. They
had worked on comparing Eng-
lish and Vietnamese texts of
the October draft.

LOS ANGELES TIMES 13 December 1972 (14)

New U.S. Buildup in Vietnam

President Nixon has reduced the American military forces in Vietnam from almost 600,000 in the first months of his Presidency to 25,200. The number now is frozen pending clarification of where the Paris peace talks are going. But the remaining troops are organized for withdrawal on a 57-day schedule to conform with the 60-day limit written into the nine-point peace plan tentatively agreed on two months ago.

At the same time, the United States is quietly and slowly building up its civilian forces in South Vietnam, actively recruiting additional personnel, reportedly authorizing the transfer of some soldiers to civilian status, alerting Indochina experts now in other posts that they soon may be sent to Vietnam. Unofficial estimates indicate that a civilian force of as many as 10,000 Americans is being prepared for Vietnam.

There is no official explanation because, officially, there is only a denial of such a buildup. But it is clear from some of the categories being recruited that the new band of Americans in mufti will be doing in the future some of the things that Americans in uniform are doing now, including such tasks as operating computers for the Saigon military command, advising troops in action, repairing, servicing and perhaps flying combat and transport aircraft, and assisting with espionage and sabotage.

To put it bluntly, there is evidence that the American government has no intention of ending American involvement in Indochina, that it is only working to convert the involvement to the form that prevailed before the massive buildup and direct battlefield role of 1965 and 1966.

If this is the intention, it is time for Mr. Nixon to be very clear about it. It must be explained. It must be debated. The ultimate decision must represent the will of Congress, a national consensus.

As matters now stand, we know of no good reason to justify the buildup.

Of course, it can be argued that there are not enough skilled Vietnamese to operate the sophisti-

cated weapons and instruments of war that were given them by the United States. But the point is that peace, not war, is to be waged now.

Of course, it can be argued that President Nguyen Van Thieu will be weaker without the Americans, more vulnerable to overthrow, and it can be anticipated that there will be cheating on a ceasefire, and perhaps no absolute peace for years and years. But it is no more reasonable to propose a prolongation of the American commitment than to advocate the right of Hanoi to recruit advisers from Moscow and Peking.

Aid there must be, aid both to the north and the south, a reconstruction of Vietnam, regardless of ideology and political commitment, but not aid that is a screen to preserve American influence and prolong American commitment.

It is not in the American interest to talk, as American officials now are talking, of enlarging the number of U.S. consulates in South Vietnam and placing them just where U.S. Army corps headquarters have been operating. It is a travesty to suggest that the military attache in the U.S. Embassy requires "hundreds" on his staff. There is no logic to recruiting a 100-man team of Americans to monitor the cease-fire unless the United States would be looking for an excuse to recenter the hospitals. It is folly to leave even a suspicion that the reconstruction contractors may be operatives of the CIA.

Mr. Nixon sought office in 1968 and reelection in 1972 on a commitment to get out of Vietnam. That is what the American people understand is being arranged in Paris. That is what the American people have shown so clearly that they want.

They want to get out not just because they are weary of the war, not just because they now recognize the madness of the war. They want to get out because they now know that this is not and never was their business. It is not for the Americans, it is for the Vietnamese to decide the future of Vietnam—the Vietnamese by themselves, not through the mask of a new and clandestine army of Americans.

1-E

W YORK TIMES

December 1972

Who's Winning What?

President Thieu is, naturally, still trying to win at the negotiating table what his armed forces and those of the United States have failed to win on the battlefield. That is the simple meaning of the condition which he required Mr. Kissinger to press upon the North Vietnamese negotiators in the most recent round of Paris talks: a formal and unequivocal statement from Hanoi that the Saigon government is the sole sovereign authority over South Vietnam.

This is nothing less than what the war has been all about all these years. Its intrusion now into the Hanoi-Washington dialogue seems almost like a final act of desperation by Saigon's leader. One cannot blame President Thieu for trying, for he has seen clearly from the first something that the White House has not been willing publicly to admit: that the nine-point accord achieved by Mr. Kissinger and Hanoi's Le Duc Tho last October would perilously weaken Saigon's position.

American troops would be withdrawn. North Vietnamese troops would remain. The voice of Hanoi would be accorded legitimacy in South Vietnam through the so-called National Council of Reconciliation and Concord; and thus the principle is established that political power must be shared not on Saigon's own terms, but among more or less equal partners. The Prime Minister

of nearby Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, is reported to have made the not-surprising prediction that the emerging Vietnam accord would lead to a Communist takeover of all Indochina.

Though his public statements are somewhat confusing, President Thieu seems to have accepted the inevitability of case-fire arrangements that will unquestionably place his regime at a long-term disadvantage. What he is asking in return, therefore, is a declaration of sovereignty which would allow him to claim victory even as he faces the prospect of defeat over the longer run. Hanoi, conversely, would be conceding a momentary defeat for its forces in the South in order to achieve the conditions they need to make their ultimate victory more likely.

Intellectually this may have an attractive degree of symmetry. But in practice Mr. Kissinger has taken the correct position in insisting that the issue of sovereignty among the Vietnamese is not for the United States to decide. Washington will not sign away the claims to sovereignty of its ally, nor can it employ diplomacy to force Hanoi into recognizing a sovereignty that years of combat failed to establish.

In any case, no verbal adjustment at this point can change the military facts of the last ten years. Agreement to end a war that no one has won in reality must not be indefinitely held up because of a dispute over which side can claim victory in the abstract.

NEW YORK TIMES 15 DEC 1972

Vietnam,
Paris,
Washington

By James Reston

PARIS, Dec. 14—The Vietnam peace talks in Paris are still going on, but the point of decision is really back in the White House, where it has been from the start. The question now is whether President Nixon is prepared to make a separate peace with Hanoi and the South Vietnamese Communists, and so far he has held back.

Henry Kissinger failed to get agreement here on a cease-fire, primarily because he was never authorized to play the President's trump card. He tried to persuade the South Vietnamese that they had more to gain by accepting a cease-fire on Washington's terms than by opposing it, but General Thieu's representatives here in Paris would not agree.

Mr. Kissinger was apparently authorized to imply that the U.S. would sign a separate cease-fire agreement, however reluctantly, if General Thieu didn't go along. He held to the letter and the spirit of his instructions, but he was never able to say that the United States Government had decided to sign alone by a certain date, so Saigon stalled and blocked the agreement the President was willing to sign.

This raises a fundamental question for Mr. Nixon. He has backed Thieu for years. He has defended him against all the antiwar critics in the United States. He has even risked war with the Soviet Union and China by mining the harbor of Haiphong and carrying the air war to Hanoi and even to the China border in order to demonstrate his support of General Thieu and the Saigon regime.

But General Thieu's response to all this has been to oppose President Nixon's compromise cease-fire agreement with the Vietnamese Communists

PARIS

and even to villify Mr. Kissinger in the Saigon press for carrying out what Saigon knew to be President Nixon's diplomatic instructions.

It has been obvious for months and even years that, while Washington and Saigon were allies, their national interests would not be the same once Hanoi was ready to sign a compromise cease-fire agreement.

President Nixon never promised to guarantee the security of the Saigon regime, but merely to give it a "fair chance" to defend itself. He has taken great political and military risks to

give General Thieu this chance, but now Thieu is insisting that President Nixon do more—keep fighting and negotiating until the Communists agree that Hanoi withdraw, all its troops and recognize Saigon's authority over all the territory of South Vietnam, including the areas the Communists still control.

Washington has tried to persuade Saigon that this may be an understandable but is nevertheless an unreasonable demand. Yet General Thieu insists that Mr. Kissinger's Saigon's control of areas which now belong to the South Vietnamese nor even to American Air Force have been able to command.

President Nixon has gone to great lengths—some of his critics would say almost to ridiculous lengths—to support General Thieu, but the South Vietnamese leader has shown little interest in the President's problems and is now trying to blackball him into carrying on the war on Saigon's terms.

The last two negotiating sessions here in Paris have made this perfectly clear. The President has been patient ever since he authorized Mr. Kissinger late in October to announce that "peace is at hand." But patience by Messrs. Nixon and Kissinger has not been enough. General Thieu has interpreted Washington's patience as weakness, and now the Paris game is up.

Nobody here in Paris presumes any longer that the technicians who have been left behind will be able to arrange a compromise which Henry Kissinger failed to negotiate. So now the President either has to go along with General Thieu and the war as it is, and forget his hopes of getting the American prisoners back by Christmas and the war behind him by his inauguration Day on Jan. 20, or make clear to Mr. Thieu that he is going to sign the separate peace, however reluctantly, by a certain date, and soon.

Even then, General Thieu might not agree to sign on Mr. Nixon's cease-fire terms; but at least the Paris talks would be brought down to reality. Lacking a clear decision in the White House to sign a separate peace by a date certain, the chances are that there will be no agreement in Paris.

However, once there is a clear decision by President Nixon to sign a separate peace agreement, General Thieu might, even then, not go along. But until such a decision is made, the

judgment of the men involved in peace talks here is that there will be no settlement. In short, the resolution of the Paris talks does not lie here but in the White House, and with President Nixon. The buck has to stop somewhere, and as Henry Trumam said, it always stops on the President's desk.

CY3

NEW YORK TIMES - 17 DECEMBER 1972 F-1 (18)

# Kissinger Says Talks Haven't Reached 'Just' Accord

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN
Special to The New York Times

Henry A. Kissinger said today that the negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam had so far failed to reach what President Nixon resumed as "a just and fair agreement" to end the Vietnam war.

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

## Defends U.S. Proposals

"We will not be blackmailed into an agreement," Mr. Kissinger said in a news conference. "We will not be stigmatized into an agreement. And if I may say so, we will not be charmed into an agreement, until its conditions are right."

Mr. Kissinger seemed and justify his statement on Oct. 25 that "peace is at hand," and he defended the American proposals made in the latest round of talks, which apparently brought counterproposals from Hanoi that Mr. Kissinger said had often been "frivolous."

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

## Tells of Frustrations in Paris

This was an apparent reference to the mood of expectation that had been created by the Administration's oft stated optimism of the last seven weeks.

Mr. Kissinger said the negotiations were now at "a curious point." On the one hand, he said, "we have an agreement that is 99 per cent completed," but on the other, he said, solution of the remaining 1 per cent requires a major decision by Hanoi.

Mr. Kissinger, President Nixon's chief adviser on foreign policy, said that the recent negotiations in Paris with Mr. Tho had been marked by frustration. He said that every time so

agreement seemed "just within our reach, it pulled just beyond our reach when we tried to grasp it."

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

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

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

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

> The first dealt with the question of an international supervisory team to check on the cease-fire.

Mr. Kissinger said Hanoi refused to discuss details of its activity until the day before he was to return to Washington. He said the United States believed the force should consist of several thousand members—8,000 has been mentioned in private—and should have freedom of movement.

But he said that Hanoi wanted to limit the force—of Canadians, Hungarians, Indians and Poles—to 25, of which nearly half would be limited to headquarters. The North Vietnamese also insisted that the forces should have no transport or communications of its own, and should never ally with us, he said.

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

The second, and potentially more difficult to solve, dealt with an issue that apparently was raised by the United States in the latest round of negotiations: efforts to get the agreement to move ahead that Saigon had complete sovereignty over South Vietnam.

Details of this dispute were made known to The New York Times in June last week, but Mr. Kissinger refused to discuss them today. More than a month has passed.

We did not know the United States wanted to know that the agreement made it clear that "the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other."

Mr. Kissinger said that this was "an fundamental point" that had been accepted beyond our age, and on rejected by Hanoi at the time. "We are raising a new fundamental point. We are raising the acceptance of something that had already once been accepted," he said.

## Demands of Thieu Noted

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

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

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

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

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

## Seems on Defensive

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

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

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

Mr. Kissinger, however, suggested strongly that Mr. Nixon was sticking by his proposals and that the fault lay not in Saigon but in Hanoi for the decay. At one point, he said that sometimes the Vietnamese, who have fought for so many years, fear the risks of a peace more than they do continuing the fighting.

There is sure to be debate in

coming days on whether Mr. Kissinger's analysis, blaming North Vietnam for the impasse in the talks, is justified. He said that Hanoi was sure to issue its own version of events as soon as it learned of his news conference.

Mr. Kissinger said that when the Vietnam negotiations resumed in Paris on Nov. 20, he offered three types of proposals. The first dealt with "linguistic problems," the second dealt with the international machinery for a cease-fire, to insure that the group went into action immediately, and the third with the controversial language dealing with two Vietnams.

## Reports Change In Attitude

He said that for the first three days, the negotiations continued in the "spirit and attitude" of the October negotiations that led to the nine-point draft agreement.

"We presented our proposals. Some were accepted and some rejected. We had made substantial progress. All of us felt we were close to an agreement," he said.

"I do not know what decisions were made in Hanoi, but from that point on, negotiations have had the character of where a settlement was always just within our reach, but was always just beyond our reach when we attempted to grasp it," he said.

On Nov. 25, the two sides reconciled in Paris, and resumed again on Dec. 4. He said that the American team thought only two or three more days of negotiations were needed to resolve the remaining issues.

But he said that on Dec. 4, Hanoi pulled back on every change agreed to two weeks earlier. Then, he said, the United States spent the rest of the week getting to where the two sides had stood when the talks resumed on Dec. 4.

"By Saturday, Dec. 9, the Americans felt they were again within reach of an agreement, and General Haig returned to Washington, Mr. Kissinger said. Bu beginning on Monday, Dec. 11, Hanoi seemed anxious to delay an agreement, raising one issue as soon as another one was settled.

He gave no reason for the decision to suspend the talks at that point, but he suggested that Mr. Nixon believed the sessions had been unproductive.

13 December 1972

(18)

Vietnam Mystery Stories

To judge from the amount of time he devoted to the latest round of Paris meetings, White House adviser Henry Kissinger made the present negotiating position of the U. S. government unmis- kably clear to the North Vietnamese. The Nixon Administration seems gain reluctant to conduct an equally frank exchange of views with the Amer- ican people.

Yesterday morning, weeks after his assurance that "peace is at hand," Kissinger reported personally to the President on the talks that have just been concluded. Scarcely a shred of information on the status of the peace effort was furnished afterward by the White House; on the contrary, an impenetrable official secrecy was maintained by the Administration.

That may have been necessary dur-
ing the actual conferences in Paris. It is
impossible to justify now—with the
talks in apparently indefinite recess,
with rumors and speculation at their
thickest and with a tragic war still reap-
ing a daily harvest of deaths and maim-
ings.

Conceding that there may conceiv-
ably be some valid reason why a thor-
ough public accounting of the present
situation cannot be made immediately—
and that is a more than generous con-
mission to an Administration that has so
equently played politics with hopes of
peace—there remains no excuse for
withholding the facts from the people's
representatives.

The members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are peculiarly qualified to assess how matters truly stand, on the basis of a comprehensive official report from Kissinger and the White House. They also have the right to ask questions. The Senate and House leaders are men of discretion and integrity; their stake—and the nation's—in such information is profound.

It is not only irresponsible for the
White House to withhold the facts but,
in many ways, it is also potentially very
dangerous. It is, at least, apparent now
that Kissinger's confident estimates of
last Oct. 26 lack confirmation in mid-
December. The Nixon Administration
cannot hope to allay the deepening anx-
ieties by refusing to recognize them—or
by engaging in what has become a war
of nerves with Congress and the coun-
try.

Throughout the long years of this
snatched war, there have been too many
caisions when chances for peace were
lost because the full facts were with-
held until it was too late for the public
to be heard. What are the true obsta-
cles to peace now? What are we not
being told? Why?

C4J

434

NEW YORK NEWS 18 December 1972

SO NEAR, SO FAR

That in a nutshell is where the Vietnam peace negotia-
tions stand today, six weeks after the administration an-
nounced—in complete good faith, we believe—that a
settlement was nearly at hand.

But neither President Richard
M. Nixon nor his chief negotiator,
Dr. Henry Kissinger, made full
allowance at that time for North
Vietnam's almost limitless capac-
ity for duplicity.

Kissinger has just finished
a cram course in an old Red dip-
lomatic specialty, dealing from
the bottom of the deck.

Agreements reached one day
come unglued overnight; points
thought settled reappear under a
different guise as disputed mat-
ters; crafty translators rejigger
wording to change compromises into concessions to the
Communists.

This trickery is intended to catch the U.S. off guard, wear down our resolve, and keep the prospect of peace dangling just beyond reach in the hope that impatience will betray us into leaping for the bait and blundering into a trap.

Angered and disgusted by these tactics, President Nixon has called time out in the talks to let Hanoi know he is wise to its game and determined not to be taken in. The President has sent the enemy a message that cannot be misinterpreted: peace is still possible, but only on terms that are just, fair and honorable, and spelled out so clearly as to rule out any cheating or weaseling once the shooting stops.

The U.S. has paid too high a price for too long to settle for anything less than that.

Dr. Kissinger

NEW YORK TIMES - 18 DECEMBER 1972 P-1

Doves in Senate Hold Off
Criticism of Snag at Paris

By JOHN W. FINNEY

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17—The negative turn in the Paris peace negotiations provoked a common reaction of disappointment among Senators today, but it was still unclear whether the disappointment would lead to renewed criticism of the Administration's Vietnam policies.

For the moment, the Administration appeared to have kept the issue under political control, through Henry A. Kissinger's lengthy public statement yesterday in which he explained how the secret talks had reached an impasse.

Republican Senators close to the White House suggested that keeping the matter under control had been one of the political purposes behind the decision to have the President's national security adviser break the secrecy and give a public accounting of the state of the negotiations.

Most Reaction Is Cautious

"Disappointing" was the word used by both supporters and critics of the Administration in characterizing the Kissinger briefing. But even among the doves, there was apparently little immediate inclination to criticize the Administration openly.

But the question being raised by supporters and critics alike was whether a Democratic controlled Congress would be as tolerant and docile if no peace agreement was reached by the time Congress reconvened on Jan. 3.

The immediate reaction of Senator George McGovern, the defeated Democratic Presidential candidate, was that the Administration had "misled many people into believing the war

was virtually over" and that now "we must look again to the possibility of Congressional action to terminate any further American involvement in Indo-China."

Mr. McGovern, who now returns to his back-row desk in the Senate, will not be calling the signals as much as will the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, who is probably the most persistent and influential critic of the war in the Senate.

Senator Mansfield expressed a personal feeling of "great depression" and suggested obliquely that there would be a renewed attempt in the Senate to force an end to American involvement in the war.

If the peace talks have not been resumed by the time the new Congress convenes, Senator Mansfield said, "I anticipate that the Senate, which has been very responsible in keeping silent during the negotiations, will give prior consideration to the matter."

"What we all want is out-o-u-t." Senator Mansfield said. "I think the final conclusion of this war rests either with the President or with Congress."

Scott Foresees Tolerance

Senator Hugh Scott, the Republican leader, predicted that Congress would tend to be "tolerant" at the outset, "particularly in view of the fact that Dr. Kissinger has been very candid in explaining the difficulties." Senator Scott said he was disappointed personally but, in defense of the Administration, he emphasized that "the essential fact to be borne in mind is that the whole exercise is to make certain that war will not break out again in about a year.

"What we are striving for is a solid peace rather than a letup of hostilities which is too fuzzy around the edges."

To Senator J. W. Fulbright,

the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, "the basic issue is whether we insist on maintaining a dominant influence in the area or whether we are willing to disengage completely."

Senator Fulbright said the Kissinger briefing had gone as "a very great disappointment" because "I accepted his statement in October as indicating that peace was near." Now, he said, "I am very fearful the war will go on." As for an effort to legislate an end to the war, Senator Fulbright said he believed that the Administration still commanded a majority of votes.

Movers Blocked In House

In the last two years the Senate, often by narrow margins, repeatedly passed end-the-war amendments, only to see them blocked by the Administration in the House. Last fall, when the Paris negotiations apparently picked up a hopeful momentum, the anti-war movement in the Senate collapsed.

Senator Scott predicted that the immediate Senate criticism would center on President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam, for blocking agreement. Senator Robert J. Dole of Kansas, who is retiring as chairman of the Republican National Committee, saw an initial patience in Congress, but "real pressure building up" against the Administration.

On the Columbia Broadcasting System television program "Face the Nation," Senator Dole predicted that the antiwar movement in Congress would fail once again because there were "many of us who still believe if we are to have peace in any part of the world, it'll be negotiated by the executive branch, not Congress."

Senator William B. Saxbe, Republican of Ohio, reported that his constituents "couldn't care less about the war." He said that he had attended a luncheon today of about 50 businessmen from the Columbus area and "not one word was mentioned about Vietnam although it was the major story in the morning newspapers."

At the same time, Senator Saxbe criticized the Administration for "misreading North Vietnamese attitudes — what amazes me is that it took them so long to find out."

Senator Peter H. Dominic of

Colorado, a leader among conservative Republicans and a member of the Armed Services Committee said that he doubted that the antiwar movement would have "the emotional impact to keep going." now that American ground forces had been withdrawn from Vietnam.

But Senator Mansfield said that he sensed "a volcanic upheaval" against the war building up in the electorate. "The issue goes a lot deeper than many people think," he said in an interview. "The people's hopes were raised and they were led to believe peace was within reach. But now we are back in the same old tunnel and the lights have been dimmed again."

Senator James L. Buckley, Conservative-Republican of New York, said in a statement: "It continued to be clear that force is the only language which Hanoi understands."

436

C4J

WALL STREET JOURNAL 18 DECEMBER 1972

# Stalled Vietnam Talks May Cause Escalation Of Air War and New Nixon-Congress Tension

By ROBERT KEATLEY

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- Six years ago in Saigon, some foreign diplomats lunched with a visiting American professor there on an official mission. One tried to convince him that the war would never be ended successfully until the U.S. had a better understanding of the Vietnamese and their long conflict.

Nonsense, came the scornful reply from Prof. Henry Kissinger as he waved a stubby forefinger in the speaker's face. When you are a big power, he declared, you never have to play by someone else's rules.

Last Saturday Mr. Kissinger-now President Nixon's senior adviser on national security affairs-conceded that superpower rules haven't yet persuaded Hanoi to sign an acceptable cease-fire and that therefore peace isn't, after all, immediately at hand. In a generally pessimistic report, Mr. Kissinger said the secret Paris peace talks are at least temporarily stalled, with no resumption currently scheduled and with no end of the war in sight.

"We have not yet reached an agreement that the President considers just and fair," Mr. Kissinger told a news conference. He said the main reason was that the negotiations had become a "charade" in which "one frivolous issue after another was surfaced" by Hanoi officials in what seemed to be "a delaying action for whatever reason."

Predictably enough, North Vietnam called this charge "untrue" and "deliberately distorted." A Hanoi spokesman said the U.S. was at fault for the delay because it "insisted on changing many substantive questions." He said the Communist side is still ready to sign the nine-point agreement that it publicized Oct. 26 and that Mr. Kissinger charges Hanoi has in fact been revising greatly throughout subsequent negotiations.

## An Indefinite Recess

Whatever the truth, the talks have adjourned indefinitely while both sides consider their next moves. Hanoi's senior negotiator, Politiburo member Le Duc Tho, is en route home for top-level consultations there. Meanwhile, Mr. Kissinger's senior deputy, Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Haig, left last night for Saigon and other Southeast Asian capitals to report on the stalemate. And at the White House, President Nixon is holding conferences with ranking civilian and military officials about future U.S. actions.

Both sides could decide to resume talks before long. But it normally takes at least two weeks for Mr. Tho to reach Hanoi, hold discussions and return to Paris. If Hanoi makes what the U.S. considers the right political decisions, Mr. Kissinger said an agreement can be completed quickly—perhaps in a day or two. He said only one fundamental political issue, plus some lesser procedural ones, is holding up an Indochina cease-fire that would allow return of all U.S. troops and prisoners from the war zone.

But reaching an agreement won't be easy. The remaining fundamental issue seems to be the one that the war is all about—North Vietnam's right to use whatever means it chooses, including force, to overthrow the Saigon government.

Mr. Kissinger wouldn't state precisely which fundamental issue still divides negotiators. But by indirection he made clear it involves North Vietnam's rights inside South

Vietnam. And he said the major problem had once been resolved, only to have Hanoi's Mr. Tho then renege on his agreement.

"We cannot accept the proposition that North Vietnam has a right of constant intervention in the South," Mr. Kissinger emphasized. He said Mr. Nixon insists on "some reference in the agreement, somehow, however illusive, however indirect, which would make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other and that neither side would impose its solution on the other by force."

Yet this is what Hanoi refuses to sign, for it argues there is only one Vietnamese nation.

For example, a recent editorial in Nhan Dan, the North Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper, proclaimed that "the U.S. lackey administration (in Saigon) must be abolished now" as a "clique that has invited elephants to trample on their ancestors' tombs." It claimed that all Vietnamese have the "sacred self-defense right to fight the aggressors throughout the territory of their own fatherland"—meaning in both North and South.

## The Right 'to Liberate'

Thus, despite years of suffering war damage, Hanoi remains unwilling to relinquish its right "to liberate the South" and eventually unify the two Vietnams under Communist rule. Instead, it offers now to sign a more limited agreement with the U.S. that wouldn't restrict seriously its future actions in the South.

Basically, it appears that the Hanoi document would return all U.S. war prisoners and end hostilities between North Vietnam and the U.S., including all American bombing. It also provides for a cease-fire that, for a time at least, would prohibit major military actions by either side. And it would require a complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Indochina within 60 days.

But Hanoi refuses to accept any restrictions on the future use of the 100,000 or more troops it would leave in South Vietnam. And it wants terms that guarantee in advance that any international force to supervise the cease-fire would prove totally ineffective in practice.

The latter issue is important, for the two sides are "at drastic variance" about how to supervise any war-ending agreement. Mr. Kissinger said. The U.S. wants a four-nation force of perhaps 5,000 men in South Vietnam, with great freedom to investigate alleged cease-fire violations and report to an outside agency. Washington hopes that constant inspection and publicity would cause both sides to honor terms of an agreement.

## Hanoi's Terms

However, as Mr. Kissinger explained it, Hanoi wants not more than 250 men on the scene, with half those assigned to headquarters. Further, it doesn't want supervisory teams to have vehicles, radios or even housing of their own. Such restrictions would make the teams totally dependent upon local authorities—Vietcong or Saigon—for all logistical needs and transportation. Hanoi also demands that teams have no rights to investigate unless these local commanders give permission. It appears that North Vietnam wants supervisory forces like those that were previously agreed on at the 1954 and 1962 Geneva conferences on Indochina and that proved unable to stop or even slow warfare in that region.

Mr. Kissinger contends that agree about cease-fire supervision can be re quickly if Hanoi conceives that the two names should live in peace and thus gives up its right to future military offensives after the Americans are gone. But if North Vietnam refuses to make this concession, the next American moves remain unclear.

Most likely, though, some actions will be mandatory. One could be a halt to American troop withdrawal from South Vietnam, where U.S. forces are down to about 25,000 men. Another could be lifting bombing restrictions over North Vietnam; for weeks now the U.S. hasn't attacked north of the 20th Parallel—a region that includes the Hanoi area. If serious talks don't seem likely soon, Mr. Nixon may cancel those self-imposed limitations as a means of applying pressure on the Hanoi government.

However, Mr. Nixon may wait a while—assessing Hanoi's next diplomatic moves—before deciding whether to escalate the air war significantly.

Of course, North Vietnam may conclude soon that prolonging the war is undesirable and offer the political concession that Mr. Kissinger said is needed. In fact, because the major issue was once resolved only to have Mr. Tho then renege, according to Mr. Kissinger, "we are not talking of an issue of principle that is totally unacceptable."

Yet the delay comes as a deep disappointment to many people who, based on past public comments by Mr. Kissinger and others, thought that the war would soon end. Such appointment might give Mr. Nixon new cal troubles when Congress convenes month, provided nothing definitive happens in the meantime. Already the dovish Sen. George McGovern, Mr. Nixon's opponent in the November elections, has charged that there never was any hope for a peace settlement and that Mr. Nixon had merely tricked the public into believing an agreement was near for political reasons.

If enough moderate politicians agree, Congress may yet pass restrictive legislation cutting off war funds or otherwise curbing presidential powers. However, assorted efforts to do so in past legislative sessions have all failed.

TIME MAGAZINE 18 DECEMBER 1972 (12)

Pursuing the Still Elusive Terms of Peace

HENRY KISSINGER was back in Paris to meet Hanoi's Le Duc Tho for another in the seemingly interminable series of secret talks aimed at ending the war in Viet Nam. Lacking any formal announcements of either final agreement or impasse, newsmen concentrated on the omens—and they were ambiguous. As Kissinger emerged from one session, a nearly all-black cat jumped atop his Cadillac limousine. At another meeting in the private home of an American jeweler in fashionable Neuilly-sur-Seine, Kissinger pointed at the ceiling and said with a puckish smile: “When the light bulb starts blinking, it means we have to change the tape.” As the North Vietnamese laughed, Kissinger assured them the room was not bugged.

The quip rather than the cat seemed to symbolize the state of the talks. In the general atmosphere of friendliness, definite progress was reported, and one high U.S. source estimated that there was only a 5% chance that the talks could break down. In fact, Hanoi seemed to be preparing its North Vietnamese listeners for an imminent ceasefire and some concessions to the enemy. “There is a time for us to advance,” intoned Radio Hanoi, “but there is also a time for us to step backward temporarily, in order to advance more steadily later. Sometimes we must accept a certain agreement with the enemy...aimed at weakening the enemy’s forces and strengthening ours.” The U.S. State Department, too, apparently anticipates an early settlement; 100 Foreign Service officers have been told

to stand by to travel to South Viet Nam to serve, among other duties, as observers watching for truce violations at least until a more formal four-nation commission can take over the task.

For all that, there was no doubt that the going was difficult, as Tho and Kissinger met six times during the week. Some talkathons lasted five hours. The cable traffic from Kissinger to the White House was unusually heavy, suggesting that the tentative language of sections of a final agreement was being transmitted for presidential approval. It was evident throughout the week that Nixon was remaining in close touch with each negotiating development.

**Ominous.** The talks apparently concentrated on three crucial points: 1) finding a formula that would guarantee that the North Vietnamese would make at least a token withdrawal of forces from South Viet Nam after a cease-fire; 2) the question of whether political prisoners held by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu's government must be released; 3) the powers and duties of the proposed National Council of Reconciliation that would supervise the postwar elections and a new political arrangement for governing South Viet Nam. Also debated were the problems involved in establishing cease-fires in Laos and Cambodia when fighting stops in Viet Nam, and the details of getting a proposed International Control Commission into operation to supervise the truce.

At stake in many of those details is the key question of how the Communists can be prevented from seizing

control of the new South Viet Nam government. U.S. intelligence sources report ominously that captured documents indicate that Hanoi is instructing many of its forces not to disband after the cease-fire but to reorganize as Viet Cong guerrilla-style units and continue terror and harassment tactics.

Thieu still remains a potential stumbling block. Radio Saigon warned that without Thieu's signature, "any peace accord concluded is just a piece of paper headed for the wastebasket." But American officials in Saigon were choosing the catchword "reality" as the reason they thought Thieu would buckle to the U.S. pressure for peace. Explained one: "Thieu must recognize the realities. He cannot expect to win in negotiations what he cannot win on the battlefield."

While the delay in pinning down a settlement meant that the bombing, fighting and dying were continuing, it was also working to Thieu's short-term advantage. His troops have had time to recapture—or simply destroy—many of the hamlets the Communists seized when an earlier cease-fire seemed imminent. The U.S. has also been able to rush in more military supplies than had been planned under the Vietnamization program. Thieu has also been assured by President Nixon that the U.S. will not let him fall because of any Communist violaton of the cease-fire.

While a peace package once again seemed close at hand, its durability, as well as the political future of South Viet Nam, remained almost as tenuous as ever.

MY TURN: William F. Buckley Jr.

What Thieu Should Do

It has been a while since the boys re-
ferred to President Thieu as our pup-
pet, and although the term was used
as derogation during all those years, they
wish now, most of them, that he were in
fact our puppet, that he would simply
shut up and do as Henry Kissinger tells
him to do. This they desire for two rea-
sons, one of them commendable, the
other less so. They want the Vietnam
war to end (or at least insofar as we
are connected with it in any way). And
they would like to see their own vatici-
nations written into history. They have
all along been saying that because it was
always, really, a civil war and because
the Viet Cong, for all that their practices
are occasionally unpleasant, were always
the truly indigenous representatives of
the post-colonial Indochinese culture,
therefore the Communists would prevail,
and should.

Henry Kissinger is most definitely not a member of this group. His views on the Vietnam war, and the only satisfactory means of terminating it, were nicely stated in Foreign Affairs early in 1969, in an essay he wrote just before he left off writing about history in order to make history; and in that article he said, as plainly as any professor can, not only that the United States has a stake in Vietnam, but that the rest of the world has a stake in America's stake in Vietnam.

THE STICKING POINT

But now Henry Kissinger is up against it. He has pushed the North Vietnamese about as far as he can. After his return from Paris and Saigon he told one friend jubilantly that if in advance of that trip Mr. Nixon had publicized as non-negotiable terms for a cease-fire the concessions the North Vietnamese had gone on to make, "Nixon would have been denounced by National Review as being too intransigent." Well, the North Vietnamese, for reasons inscrutable and not so inscrutable, capitulated: prisoners released: no coalition government; a facesaving tripartite advisory body of national conciliation whose recommendations would be operative only when made unanimously; President Thieu in direct charge of one-third of the membership of said board; the government of South Vietnam meanwhile directly governed by Thieu; withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from Cambodia and Laos; retention of U.S. bases in Thailand; provisioning of North Vietnamese soldiers in the south only for maintenance...

North Vietnamese soldiers in the
south!

The North Vietnamese unsmilingly tell you that there are no North Vietnamese in the south, the U.S. counterpart of which would be to declare solemnly, say in the United Nations, that there is no Negro problem in the South for the simple reason that there are no Negroes in the South. How, say the North Vietnamese, can we be asked to "repatriate" soldiers who are really South Vietnamese to begin with, whom we feel merely a humane duty to continue to provision?

This has become the sticking point. Those who feel impatient with the intransigence of President Thieu should, however, ask themselves what would have been the attitude of, say, Charles de Gaulle if, in order to shorten the World War, we had proposed to him a cease-fire that provided for the indefinite government of half a dozen French departments by the Nazi army.

Exactly. Thieu is exactly right.

But so is Richard Nixon right. Right in saying that the time has more or less come when the United States has to ease away. In 1969 we began to ease away. Over a period of three years we reduced our forces in Vietnam back to the status of military advisers. We were suddenly called upon, in response to the spring offensive, to use our navy and air force d'outrance, and we're still doing it. The political temper in America requires that we continue to disengage; and this means, in effect, a cease-fire. This is required for reasons palpable and impalpable. To continue the aerial bombardment and the blockade would cost-just these two operations--$4 billion during calendar 1973. It isn't obvious that Congress will pass along the money, notwithstanding the Presidential landslide. But more than that, the American people believe that the time has come to terminate our involvement provided that can be accomplished on reasonable terms, and the terms are adjudged as-reasonable.

ADROIT FORMULA

Put differently: if the North Vietnam-
ese adhere to the terms of the cease-fire,
the North Vietnamese enclaves within
South Vietnam will in the months and
years to come no more compromise the
de facto sovereignty of South Vietnam
than Guантánamo compromises the de
facto sovereignty of Cuba. In both cases
it is a burr that prickles the national
pride. But inconclusive ends to protract-

ed wars are sometimes better than con-
clusive ends; and sometimes there is no
other way.

If the North Vietnamese do not intend to abide by the terms of the cease-fire it hardly makes that much of a difference that they should have 100,000 of their men belaguered here and there in the south. The President of the United States will presumably pledge to visit the wrath of our military on fresh aggression in violation of the terms of the cease-fire. China and the Soviet Union, for elaborate but elaboratable reasons, are probably disinclined to encourage a violation of the cease-fire on a massive scale in the near future. It is a gamble, of course. And an American sympathetic to the meaning of the Vietnam war, admiring of Thieu and considerate of the limitations imposed by current reality on Richard Nixon seeks an adroit formula for saying to Thieu: get every single thing you can. And then-do not merely go along, go along with public enthusiasm.

VALIDATION

. This is important primarily for the United States, but indirectly for Thieu himself. For the United States it is important that when we pull out of Vietnam, we shall in the view of the people of the world have consummated our purpose. Since this will not have been objectively consummated, in the sense of having reduced the North Vietnamese aggressive potential to rubble, the situation is left ambiguous. It is therefore only Thieu who can convincingly pronounce upon what America did accomplish. If he announces to the world that he has been betrayed by the United States, quite apart from the damage he does himself in terms of prospective aid from the United States and a new crisis, he undermines the historical point we have sought to make: that the United States can be taken at its word; that our treaties mean something; that the nations of Europe, and of the Middle East, and in the Pacific and South Pacific, can view the Indochinese experience as a historical validation of America's word, on which they themselves depend, should they find themselves lying in the way of tomorrow's aggressive salient. South Vietnam needs to be a continuing member of a world fraternity that looks upon the United States if not with awe, at least with respect, and perhaps, in due course, with even a little pride.

Having ascertained that the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris will not go further-perhaps cannot go further (the North Vietnamese rulers are themselves divided: there are those who are bitter against the concessions already made in Paris)-Thieu's alternative reduces not only to petulance, but to the kind of bitter self-isolation that is itself an inducement to renewed aggression from the north, and fatalistic demoralization at home.

Newsweek, 18 December 1972 (12)

BOSTON GLOBE

18 December 1972 (21)

Backtracking on peace

Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's foreign adviser, was plainly fatigued, so frustrated and appeared to be so embarrassed at his White House news conference on Saturday that one could not help but feel sorry for him. Missing was the ebullience of former occasions, notably the news conference of Oct. 26 when he announced that "peace is at hand"—which, now, it clearly is not.

Whether Mr. Kissinger is more frustrated by Hanoi or by the President whose orders he is pledged to obey is pure guesswork. A good guess would be that it is a little of both, for it seemed clear, in what Mr. Kissinger himself said, that it is not only Hanoi but also Mr. Nixon himself who changed the terms of the agreement which Mr. Kissinger and Hanoi had negotiated for the Oct. 31 signing which Mr. Nixon blocked.

The crux of the current difficulty, no matter the hundreds of Mr. Kissinger's words on peripheral matters, is South Vietnamese President Thieu's insistence that South Vietnam be accorded the designation of a sovereign state and Hanoi's insistence that North and South Vietnam are one nation, as was recognized in the Geneva Accords of 1954 (Globe editorial, Dec. 16).

Mr. Kissinger on Saturday tried hard to fudge the President's position on this most crucial of all issues. "We wanted some reference in the agreement, however vague, however elusive, however indirect ... which would make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other and that

neither side would impose its solution on the other."

The fudging was so complete as to provoke a newsman's request for clarification. "Isn't it that Vietnam is one country and this agreement is supposed to ratify that point?" But Mr. Kissinger significantly was not given a chance to answer. "This," interjected another voice coming from a partly concealed area "will be the final question, as Henry has to leave now."

The fact is, of course, that the agreement Mr. Kissinger negotiated almost two months ago twice noted that the reunification of Vietnam was a primary objective. Point one states, "The United States respects the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva agreements." And Point five states, "The reunification of Vietnam shall be carried out step by step through peaceful means."

What Mr. Kissinger negotiated two months ago is precisely what the international community recognized as a legal and certain truth almost two decades ago. The agreement provides, moreover, that reunification is to be achieved now just as it would have been achieved then, if Washington had not blocked it — through an internationally supervised election and peaceful negotiations.

On Saturday, Mr. Kissinger said an agreement will be one which "the President considers just and fair." But the President himself, not an unhappy spokesman whom he pushes to the fore, owes it to the nation to explain unequivocally just what he considers "just and fair."

CHICAGO SUN TIMES 19 DECEMBER 1972 (27)

Bitterness over Vietnam

Reaction to the delay in the Vietnam
cease-fire settlement was eloquently
expressed by Pope Paul VI — "bitter-
ness invades our heart." The peace
that was supposed to be at hand two
months ago is still beyond reach. Com-
plications described Saturday by Hen-
ry A. Kissinger and the resumption of
American bombing Monday seem to
have set back the quest for peace im-
measurably.

It is difficult to assess the situation
because the great decisions are being
made in the style of personal diploma-
cy that President Nixon used with
great success in his first term. That
is, the exact terms for settlement are
being decided by President Nixon and
his national security adviser, Kiss-
inger, with little or no voice being
allowed for other representatives of
the public, namely Congress. If Mr.
Nixon cannot put the peace efforts
back on the track soon Congress can
be expected to try to take a greater
hand in the proceedings, perhaps by
cutting off war funds.

This home front pressure has been
cited as one reason Hanoi may be
seeking more than it was willing to
give two months ago. On the other
hand, the pressure is just as great on
Mr. Nixon to reject demands being
made by President Thieu of South
Vietnam that were not included in the
earlier agreement.

A major block to agreement seems
to be Thieu's demand that his govern-
ment be assured the right of control
over all the territory it held before the
war began. There can be no sentiment
in the White House for this position —
it is directly opposed to the very idea
of a cease-fire in place that Mr. Nixon
has been working for. Every U.S. pro-
posal for peace since May, 1970, has
accepted the presence of North Viet-
namese troops in South Vietnam.

But just as Thieu has tried to

change the agreement, so, apparently,
has Hanoi. Kissinger says that Hanoi
earlier agreed, implicitly, to the exis-
tence of two Vietnams when it accept-
ed the existence of a demilitarized
zone between the two countries. Now
Hanoi is demanding that both Viet-
nams be considered as one, a position
South Vietnam has also taken. The un-
resolved issue, of course, is which gov-
ernment will control the territory
eventually.

This is the issue that Mr. Nixon's
original plan intended that the Viet-
namese work out themselves, after a
cease-fire. The idea that the Viet-
namese should work out their own po-
litical destiny requires supervision of
elections and of the cease-fire itself.
The United States proposed 5,000 rep-
resentatives from four outside coun-
tries to roam the area to supervise the
peace. Now Hanoi wants to limit the
number to 250 sharply restricted as to
movement. This is one of the unre-
solved issues.

What then, is the outlook? This de-
pends on how much each side truly
wants peace. The United States and
Hanoi were able to come to what
agreements they did come to because
Hanoi seems to want an end to the
war as much as Washington does. Kiss-
singer says that 99 per cent of a settle-
ment has been reached.

From now on it would seem the saf-
est and wisest course for Mr. Nixon
would be to drop the effort at secrecy
and to work out what details remain in
the open. Kissinger moved in this di-
rection by his admissions of problems
last Saturday. The American public
wants an end of its involvement in
Vietnam and it wants it now. If peace
was at hand two months ago, it should
be at hand now. Only a momentous
foul-up would justify a resumption of
bombing. That is why we view such a
resumption with the bitterness in our
hearts that Pope Paul described.

Peace deferred

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
18 December 1972 (20)

CYJ

BALTIMORE SUN 20 DECEMBER 1972

Time Goes Backward in Vietnam

The unlearned lessons of more
than a quarter century suggest that
the new American bombing cam-
paign against North Vietnam will
do nothing to diminish the North
Vietnamese will to persist in its
purposes, or to force it into nego-
tiating concessions more to the lik-
ing of Washington and Saigon. The
evidence (dating back precisely 26
years: it was that long ago yester-
day that the Vietnamese under Ho
Chi Minh began their fight against
French rule) is rather to the con-
trary. Almost incredibly, given the
relative strengths of the forces en-
gaged, attrition is not going to win
this war.

Any ending at all has now, with

the impasse in Paris, been moved
again into the indefinite future. In
fact all has again become indefin-
ite. It is unclear, for example, just
what the impasse in Paris amounts
to; just what brought it about, after
the rosy declarations of past weeks.
Both sides charge bad faith, an al-
most meaningless phrase in a mat-
ter as tough and as lacking in fun-
damental goodwill as this is, for the
negotiations have essentially been
the war in another form, with both
sides struggling intently for every
ounce, inch and lota of advantage.
Only in a bookish sense, removed
from reality, is it possible to speak
of good faith and bad faith at all;
and then the mention is inaccurate.

It is said by some that in Viet-
nam we are back where we were
eight months ago, with heavy
American bombing on the one side
and steady enemy buildup on the
ether—for the enemy too is skilled,
indeed highly skilled by his own
methods, in the murderous art of
attrition—but actually there is no
way of saying how far back we are.
All we know is that we are back.

Meanwhile the death and the de-
struction continue, and more
American men are taken prisoner,
and the judgment of our leadership
in Washington, both in the assess-
ment of situation and in the reac-
tion to upset plans is placed in
question anew.

The anguish of the Vietnam war is not
yet to end, and naturally this is a cause
for widespread disappointment. It is
particularly disappointing for the wives
and families of American prisoners-of-
war who had hoped to be reunited with
'their absent ones by Christmas.

But though, on the eve of the American
esidential election, Mr. Kissinger held
out hope that peace was "at hand," it
should be remembered that it was Hanoi,
not Washington, that was pouring on the
pressure for a signed peace agreement
before election day.

That President Nixon desperately
wants peace there can be no question.
But with an eye to history's later verdict
on him, he has been firm that the
agreement must be a responsible one in
American terms.

As Mr. Kissinger said at his weekend
news conference, the United States will
not be "blackmailed" or "stampeded"
or even "charmed" into an agreement
until its conditions are right.

Disappointed as we are that peace
hopes have been temporarily dashed, we
find the positions of both Presidents
Nixon and Thieu understandable.

Take first President Thieu's position.
The agreement Mr. Kissinger worked out
in October called for a withdrawal of all
"foreign troops" from Laos and Cam-
bodia, and for withdrawal of American
troops from South Vietnam. But it did not
require the withdrawal of all North
Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam.

The reason is clear enough. North
Vietnam has never recognized the exist-
ence of South Vietnam as a separate
sovereign state. It thinks of Vietnam as a
single country all of which should prop-
erly be under the control of Hanoi. It
regards the present condition in the South
as one of improper occupation by alien
forces. It expects and intends to keep
some of its own regular forces from the
North in present positions in the South.

The difference between withdrawal
and nonwithdrawal of those Northern
troops from the South is vital to President
Thieu. If they all go away he has an
excellent chance of long-term survival in
Saigon. If they remain, their presence
gives to the local Communists (Viet Cong
and National Liberation Front) safe
havens for rest, regrouping and resupply.
The Northern troop enclaves will be for
them what the Irish Republic has, until
lately, been for the IRA gunmen fighting
in Ulster. Are Mr. Thieu's enemies in the
South to continue to enjoy "privileged
sanctuaries" under the truce terms?

Thus President Thieu is holding out
against a settlement under which his
enemies in the South could keep up
political and guerrilla warfare against
him and his regime indefinitely. And how
long could he and his regime hold out
against the erosion of indefinite guerrilla
pressure? Inevitably, he is holding out
for as much security in the future as he
can get.

Then consider President Nixon's prob-
lem. He can sign a separate peace with not by Christmas, provided he will say one
Hanoi, bring his troops home, and get his simple sentence to Mr. Thieu. All he has
prisoners back. But if he signs a separate
to do is say: From here on out you are on
peace with Hanoi the fighting goes on your own. It's that simple. But it would
between North and South Vietnam. And
how long could the Thieu forces in Saigon
stand up to the war without American
support? If President Thieu has to sur-
render or run we may be sure that he will
lay the blame for his failure at Mr.
Nixon's doorstep. Mr. Nixon would not
enjoy that.

This is a painful dilemma for Mr.
Nixon. He can have his settlement and

President Nixon has taken the tough
decision to prolong the war. If an agree-
ment is indeed "99 percent completed,"
we can only hope that the time taken to
secure the other one percent will be as
short as possible so that the continuing
human tragedy of Vietnam can be
brought swiftly to a close.