IN SEARCH OF A VENUE

If the canapes are any foretaste of the meal, the confrontation will be cold, costly and interminable. After all the enticing tidbits set out by both sides, Washington and Hanoi could not agree last week on a venue for the menu, or even accept that the other side had any real appetite for preliminary talks aimed at ending the Viet Nam war.

During the three weeks since Lyndon Johnson imposed geographic restrictions on the bombing of North Viet Nam as a means to induce negotiations, the Administration has been frustrated on two counts. The North Vietnamese, while benefiting from the curb on raids north of the 20th parallel, have mounted an intensive propaganda campaign designed to denigrate the U.S. peace initiative.

Johnson on March 31 proposed "Geneva or any other suitable place" as a meeting ground. North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Buy Trinh came back with Pnompenh, Cambodia, "or another place to be mutually agreed upon." After each side deflected the other's first suggestion, the U.S. named Laos, Burma, Indonesia and India. "Not adequate," replied the North Vietnamese, countering with Warsaw.

Feeling at Home. "The U.S.," charged a Hanoi party paper, "is deliberately trying to delay the contacts." The Administration responded publicly by trying to buttress its position and privately by attempting to break the impasse. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said it was time for Hanoi to make a "serious and responsive answer" to U.S. diplomatic communications. Rusk then proposed ten additional countries acceptable to the U.S.: Ceylon, Japan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Italy, Belgium, Finland and Austria.

It was doubtful that he expected any of them to be acceptable to the other side. North Viet Nam has no diplomatic representation in any of the ten except Ceylon. An ideal spot would be one in which Americans, North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese would feel at home diplomatically, the site of preliminary talks is likely to serve also for any full-scale negotiations that might follow. Rusk observed that he would hardly expect the North Vietnamese to go to Seoul or Canberra any more than the U.S. could be expebted to go to Peking or Hanoi.

In further clarification, Johnson set four minimal requirements for a meeting place: adequate official channels of communication; access for the representatives of U.S. allies, such as South Viet Nam; opportunity for full press coverage; and a mutually agreeable setting giving neither side a psychological advantage or handicap.

Third-Party Hope. Raising the number of U.S.-proposed sites to 15 seemed mainly a ploy to demonstrate that the U.S. was open-minded. North Viet Nam dismissed the four criteria as "absurd and insolent," and termed the lengthened list a "tortuous maneuver" to delay talks. Privately, U.S. officials have come to doubt that the North Vietnamese will accept any place on earth first suggested by the U.S. Accordingly, Washington let it be known that it was seeking proposals from third parties. At the U.N., Arthur Goldberg conferred with Secretary-General U Thant. In Washington, Rusk chatted with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. Thant has been talking about Paris and a couple of other cities. Though it has criticized U.S. policy in Viet Nam, Paris would meet the basic U.S. requirements. The reason for its omission from Rusk's shopping list was the hope that Hanoi or a third party might name it.

While continuing these diplomatic efforts, the U.S. was hinting none too subtly that the bombing restriction might not be continued indefinitely. Johnson, in Honolulu to confer with South Korean President Chung Hee Park about both Viet Nam and Seoul's security problems (see THE WORLD), stressed that it had been a long time since the bombing limitation began on March 31. "Our restraint," added Rusk, "was meant to inspire discussions about ending this war, not to provide an excuse for propaganda warfare while the battle raged on."

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