FIGHTING WHILE TALKING

FOR all the talk and hope of peace, the battlefields of South Viet Nam last week commanded equal news time with the leafy boulevards of Paris. Just as the long-awaited negotiations on the war in Viet Nam were getting under way, U.S. headquarters in Saigon announced that American casualties during the previous week were the highest yet: 562 killed in action. At the same time, the Communists launched their latest bloody round of countrywide attacks in South Viet Nam (see THE WORLD). Often suicidal, almost invariably foiled, the attacks nonetheless offered proof that Ho Chi Minh was determined and able to go on fighting while talking. It meant that, as in Korea, many more men would have to face the particularly bitter fate of dying while excruciatingly slow negotiations are trying to find an end to war.

Double Strategy. In Washington's view, Hanoi's negotiators at the Paris parley are conducting a double strategy, seeking to sow dissension between the U.S. and its nervous Saigon ally and simultaneously to gain a respite from U.S. bombing. During the first week of talks, the North Vietnamese seemed to make some headway with that strategy.

No U.S. bombers roamed above North Viet Nam's 19th parallel, and even south of that line there was a slight decrease in the number of raids. In its effort to intensify the strains be tween the U.S. and South Viet Nam, Hanoi had unexpected help. In a carelessly phrased comment during an appearance in Maine, Hubert Humphrey said that the conferees had "now" agreed to admit representatives of the Viet Cong and the Saigon regime to the negotiations. At some point, that is going to happen, if the talks are to continue; but it has not happened yet, and Humphrey's gaffe sent tremors through Saigon.

Still Fragile. Earlier Washington Post Reporter Chalmers Roberts reported from the Capital that "the U.S. is now prepared to accept a role for the Communists in the political life of South Viet Nam," no matter how the incumbent government feels about it. Secretary of State Dean Rusk immediately denied that the U.S. intended to "impose" a Communist regime on the South. The effect of the story, added the Secretary, would almost surely be to persuade the Communists that "their propaganda can divide the U.S. and its allies."

To be sure, the U.S. has no intention of forcing upon the still fragile South Vietnamese government a coalition that, by including Communists, might well swallow it. Nonetheless, any settlement that emerges from the Paris talks will ultimately have to reflect the harsh reality of the battlefield, and that reality may be the one that now prevails: a standoff. The U.S. cannot expect to get the kind of settlement it would if the enemy had been routed or were in any immediate danger of defeat. Thus, in all likelihood, some provision will eventually have to be made to give the Communists representation in a Saigon government, presumably through elections. The sticking point, of course, is how to include them without condemning the South to an inevitable Communist takeover.

Posturing Polemics. If the first week of the talks is any indication, it will be quite some time before that point is reached. Ten hours of formal negotiations plus countless hours of press briefings and background sessions produced little more than posturing and polemics, a kind of ritual, throat-clearing preamble of insults and accusations. "We are now involved in a major propaganda campaign," said Chief U.S. Negotiator Averell Harriman. "But one day they will get tired and get down to constructive discussions."

Until that day comes--optimists give it several weeks, skeptics several months --the delegates are digging in for a long stay. Harriman expects that what he calls "the garbage" will keep flowing for some time, and both he and his second-in-command, Cyrus R. Vance, are thinking of leasing apartments and sending for their wives. Hanoi's 39-member delegation, too, gives every sign of settling in. Last week, to escape the fishbowl atmosphere of the Hotel Lutetia on the Left Bank, the North Vietnamese moved into a comfortable suburban villa in Choisy-le-Roi owned by the French Communist Party.

The talks opened at the old Hotel Majestic on a matchless Paris spring morning. For the benefit of newsmen and photographers, Harriman, towering at least a foot above Hanoi's chunky Chief

Negotiator Xuan Thuy, shook hands with him in the hotel's rococo, crystal and gilt Grand Salle before moving behind the closed doors of conference room No. 5. Leading off, Thuy set a strident tone that prevailed all week. He accused the U.S. of "monstrous crimes" and repeated the "primordial and most pressing" Communist demand for a total and unconditional end to U.S. bombing of the North. Harriman, in an opening statement that was edited by Defense Secretary Clark Clifford at the request of the President, noted that all U.S. bombing would stop "if our restraint is matched by restraint on the other side." But, he added, "we cannot conceal our concern that your government has chosen to move substantial and increasing numbers of troops and supplies from the North to the South."

More Than Time. In Round 2, Harriman abandoned his earlier geniality and matched Thuy, barb for barb. Particularly pointed was his use of a 1956 admission by Hanoi's Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap: "We executed too many honest people. Terror became far too widespread. Torture came to be regarded as a normal practice." Harriman also sought to sound an upbeat note by declaring that he had been "struck by some similarities in our respective positions," notably expressions of hope for an independent and peaceful South Viet Nam. But the North Vietnamese swiftly rejected the overture, declaring: "In fact, our positions are very far apart." So they remained after a final four-hour session at week's end, held on the eve of Ho Chi Minh's 78th birthday.

Nonetheless, Hanoi did not limit the talks, as it once threatened to do, to the subject of a U.S. bombing pause; the whole of Southeast Asia was discussed. Moreover, the U.S. is hoping that Hanoi is bargaining for something more than just time. One purpose of North Viet Nam's initially intransigent stance, aside from habit, may well be to convince Peking that there will be no sellout of the Viet Cong--just as the U.S. is constantly reassuring its allies that it will not abandon Saigon.

Dovish Crows. There is speculation that the North Vietnamese will not begin bargaining seriously until November, in hopes of dealing with a more dovish U.S. President. Hanoi denies such talk. "To us," said a North Vietnamese diplomat in Paris, expanding the ornithology, "all crows are black."

Whatever the North Vietnamese are waiting for, Harriman and his team seem determined to outsit them and outtalk them. Despite the first week's barren outcome, few anticipate that either side is about to break off the negotiations. "There is something adhesive about talks like this," said a U.S. diplomat. "Once they start, they tend to go on." The danger is that they could go on--and on--until patience erodes and pressures mount in support of a wider war.

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