Tale of Three Cities

For weeks there have been small, vague, tantalizing signs pointing to a possible breakthrough toward negotiations on the Viet Nam war. Getting North Viet Nam to the conference table, most diplomats agree, can ultimately be brought about only by Peking, Moscow, or possibly Paris. Last week there were intriguing stirrings involving the three capitals.

Coos & Contempt. From Peking, after a meeting between Red Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi and eight visiting members of the Japanese Diet, came word that Chen had cooed a few hopeful words about peace talks. Just as Washington started wondering whether the war's most obdurate advocate might be backing off a bit, the Chinese ambassador to Poland, Wang Kuo-chuan, set matters straight. Following a meeting in Warsaw with U.S. Ambassador John Gronouski, the latest in a series of 130 private, little-noted conferences between representatives of the two nations since 1954, Wang delivered a blistering statement, obviously prepared well in advance, accusing the U.S. of "criminal acts," "bankrupt policy," and "butcherlike suppression and priestlike deception."

Washington could only conclude that Foreign Minister Chen's pacific tone had been expressly calculated to soothe his Japanese guests.

France, Viet Nam's old colonial master, might also have both the incentive and the influence to act as honest broker for negotiations. It became known last week that Secretary of State Dean Rusk had sent Paris a note painstakingly outlining proposals by which Hanoi and the U.S. could mutually withdraw from South Viet Nam. Yet on his subsequent trip to Cambodia, Charles de Gaulle urged that the U.S. quit Viet Nam and pointedly refrained from directing any similar suggestion to the North Vietnamese aggressors.

Reluctant Shift? The final and ultimately the most realistic route to the conference table starts in Moscow. Far more advanced, and thus with infinitely more to lose than Red China, the Soviet Union unmistakably would like to see a peace settlement--on terms, of course, as advantageous as possible to the Communist cause. Indeed, Moscow clearly wants to have the leading hand in any negotiations, but it has made equally clear--most notably in spurning the peace overtures of Britain's Harold Wilson--that the initiative has to come from Hanoi. In the wake of a secret meeting on the Black Sea between leaders of North Viet Nam and Soviet Union (TIME, Sept. 2), a second North Vietnamese delegation showed up in Moscow last week; though ostensibly an economic mission, its presence inevitably set off fresh conjecture that Hanoi was feeling out new peace prospects. Through Yugoslavia, in fact, came a report from Radio Belgrade's Moscow Correspondent Milika Sundic, that the North Vietnamese had asked the Russians during last month's meeting to "engage themselves in finding a solution to the Viet Nam problem by peaceful means."

Though Sundic claimed later that his story was based wholly on "my own guess and my own opinion," it seemed oddly in tune with dispatches out of Moscow by Western newsmen. In the view of "senior Western diplomats," reported New York Times Moscow Correspondent Peter Grose, North Viet Nam has become unsure of Red Chinese stability, is edging reluctantly into Moscow's sphere of influence.

Coming Home. Adding to the intrigue, Foy Kohler, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, announced that he would return home this week to confer with Secretary of State Rusk on matters that are sure to include the Moscow murmurings. The same subject was coming in for attention among Iron Curtain diplomats. "It would, of course, be wrong to attribute it to the American bombings," a Communist diplomat told TIME last week, "but the fact is that the passing of time is making North Viet Nam more ready to enter into peace talks."

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