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If waging a war in Asia has been a frustrating exercise for Americans, trying to end it has proved almost as stultifying. Through dozens of channels last week, the Administration was exploring Hanoi's recent statement that a halt in U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam "will" result in peace talks. But nobody could determine for certain whether the Communists were interested in launching negotiations that could end the war or in scoring a propaganda coup. "We could be on the threshold of something big," said one U.S. official, "but as of now it looks more like a cheap political ploy to get the bombing turned off for nothing."

Nonetheless, the U.S. kept probing for the answer, and its efforts resulted in a week of considerable motion but little evident movement. There were rumors that serious talks on Viet Nam were under way in Moscow, and the fact that Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin hurried home after two lengthy talks with Secretary of State Dean Rusk seemed to lend credence to them (though the Russians insisted that Dobrynin had gone home to see his ailing father-in-law). In Warsaw, U.S. Ambassador to Poland John Gronouski met with Chinese diplomats for the first time in seven months, but no news was permitted to filter from behind the closed doors. In Hanoi, Cambodia's Foreign Minister Prince Norodom Phourissara held talks with high North Vietnamese officials.

The most closely watched mission was the five-day sojourn in Cambodia by U.S. Ambassador to India Chester Bowles. It was also the most surrealistic. Chief of State Prince Norodom Sihanouk, worried that the Viet Nam war might spread into his country, asked the U.S. to send an emissary. Then, on the eve of Bowles's arrival, he executed one of his more spectacular volte-faces by declaring that the ambassador would be better off visiting the ruins of Angkor Wat than talking to him.

Bottoms & Boots. In a rambling press conference, Sihanouk made the elaborate claim that the U.S. had vainly attempted to soft-soap him last November by sending Jacqueline Kennedy over on a sub rosa diplomatic mission. "Chester Bowles is going to try to succeed where Mrs. Kennedy failed," Sihanouk declared. "But Chester Bowles, no matter how he smiles, does not have and never will have the seductive effect of Mrs. Kennedy. He will go home empty-handed." For good measure, Sihanouk added: "I do not want to lose my dignity, I do not want to lick the bottom and boots of Mr. Johnson."

Diplomats are accustomed to hearing such pronouncements from Sihanouk; just two months ago, for example, he similarly declared that he had no intention of kowtowing to Peking because "the more you lick China's boots, the more she scorns you." Undeterred by his host's verbiage, Bowles arrived on schedule, spent two long sessions with the unpredictable prince amid the tropical splendor of his Chamcar Mon Palace in Pnompenh.

The results were less than splendid. The two agreed that the three-nation (Canada, India, Poland) International Control Commission, established after the 1954 Geneva Conference to patrol Cambodia's sievelike borders, should be strengthened. For this purpose, the U.S. offered two helicopters and other modern equipment--but Russian and Polish diplomats in Pnompenh, loath to offend Hanoi by making it more difficult for Communist troops to continue using Cambodia as a sanctuary, immediately protested.

Bowles also emphasized that the U.S. "will do everything possible to avoid acts of aggression against Cambodia"--presumably a reference to Sihanouk's fears that U.S. troops might begin chasing fleeing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers across the border. Nonetheless, the wording did not entirely rule out "hot pursuit." "When you have a situation where Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops are there," said Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy during a Washington briefing, "there may arise a situation where American forces are faced with the necessity of taking action in self-defense."

Pinprick Phase. Skeptical though it was toward Hanoi's latest stance on talks, the Administration repeatedly emphasized that it was determined to explore the matter thoroughly--but with as little fanfare as possible. "If I discuss private contacts," said Rusk in a speech before 1,500 members of the Commonwealth Club of California and the World Affairs Council of Northern California in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, whose walls were splattered with red paint by some 400 antiwar demonstrators, "then they are no longer either private or contacts." Rusk also urged that Americans should quit "debating among ourselves whether this is a civil war. Of course there is a civil-war element in the problem. But there are also from 20 to 25 regiments of North Vietnamese soldiers now operating in South Viet Nam. I can assure you that if 20 regiments of West Germans were to move into East Germany, the Warsaw Pact countries would not look upon that as a family affair among Germans."

The shift in Hanoi's wording prompted some statesmen in the U.S. and abroad to urge the U.S. to take a chance on a bombing pause and see if talks result. "We've been saying we'd be willing to talk if we got the smallest sign from the enemy," said Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. "Well, we've got it." British Foreign Secretary George Brown, after a Washington meeting with Dean Rusk, described Hanoi's offer as a "significant move." In Saigon, the 17 Roman Catholic bishops of South Viet Nam urged an end to both the bombing of the North and the infiltration of arms and men into the South. Said the bishops in an emotional plea to both sides: "In the name of God, we cry, stop!"

There was also speculation that Hanoi has finally concluded that neither the protest movement in the U.S. nor the coming presidential election is going to result in a major change in American policy, and consequently has abandoned its previous attitude toward talks. In Washington, Soviet and East European diplomats spent a busy week trying to convince U.S. officials of precisely that point.

In Hong Kong, however, a U.S. expert on Viet Nam warned that Hanoi is interested in talks as a means of achieving not peace but a different kind of war. By getting the U.S. to call off its bombers, he reasoned, the North Vietnamese would "lower the profile" of the conflict, reducing it from big-unit operations to the pinprick guerrilla maneuvers at which the Communists have been so effective. Reinforcing that line of thought was a document recently captured by U.S. forces calling on the Communists to "fight the war and negotiate at the same time." The directive continued: "The war will be settled only on the battlefield, not in the conference room. When hearing that negotiations are about to take place, we must attack the enemy more strongly all over the country. Negotiations will follow when we are really strong."

In the past two weeks, Hanoi has ordered a savage increase in the tempo of the fighting (see THE WORLD), and U.S. intelligence sources noted "a big buildup" of North Vietnamese troops in Laos, just across the border from the vulnerable U.S. Marine outpost of Khe Sanh near the Demilitarized Zone.

Whatever peace signals Hanoi's diplomats were sending out, its generals were obviously transmitting powerful messages of their own.

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