New Man in Paris

At the seventh session of the Viet Nam peace talks in Paris last week, there was a long pause amid the set-piece exchanges. Then, suddenly leaning across the table and intently scanning the visage of U.S. Negotiator Averell Harriman, North Viet Nam Chief Delegate Xuan Thuy spoke with surprising directness.

Thuy: When will the U.S. unconditionally cease its bombing and other acts of war against North Viet Nam so that these talks can go on to other matters related to a Viet Nam settlement?

Harriman: When will your delegation be ready to discuss those related matters?

Thuy: I have said that the U.S. must cease its bombings before the related matters can be discussed.

Harriman: Let me express the hope that one day soon we will have a meeting at which these questions can be answered simultaneously, for these are questions that must be taken together.

Clear Statement. In the arduous efforts to end the war, that conversational cameo may not seem earthshaking. But amid the ritual of prepared exchanges, in a situation where the fund of optimism constantly verges on bankruptcy, Thuy's approach to Harriman offered the only glimmer of hope during last week's three-hour and 45-minute session. For by thus addressing his opposite number informally, Thuy may have been hinting that his delegation will soon be willing to talk directly to U.S. negotiators in an atmosphere undistorted by propaganda--as Harriman has been proposing all along--rather than using the conference room as a place to recite press releases and dramatize the opposing viewpoints to the listening world.

Outside the conference room, there were other elusive hints of a softening--or an impatience--in Hanoi's approach. Was the North seeking a face-saving way of conceding that its troops are fighting in South Viet Nam--an admission that the U.S. says is essential to any discussion of further reductions in its bombing of the North? In the clearest statement yet of the part played by the Northern forces, General Vo Nguyen Giap, their commander, said in a broadcast from Hanoi: "The Army of Liberation and our people are fighting on all battlefields, from Ca Mau near the southern tip of South Viet Nam to Route 9 south of the Demilitarized Zone." Earlier in the week, however, France's L'Humanite printed an interview with Giap in which he was hardly inclined to compromise. Giap described the U.S. as an "impotent colossus" that had come to Paris only to "get out of the war."

Hard-Driving & Tough. Yet another shift in the tempo if not the direction of the talks may have been presaged by the arrival in Paris of Le Duc Tho, who ranks seventh in the North's all-powerful Communist Politburo and is the most important party theoretician after Ho Chi Minh himself. Born in Tonkin, Tho helped Ho found the Indo-Chinese Communist Party in 1929, served long sentences at penal labor under the French, and lived for many years in the South. Harddriving, ascetic and tough, Tho is believed to have purged the party in South Viet Nam of some 2,500 non-Communist nationalists in the early 1950s, and he remains a top liaison man with the Viet Cong.

He is also thought to be pro-Peking, and arrived last week appropriately dressed in a dark blue Chinese Mao suit--in stern, contrast to the Western suit of Xuan Thuy and the elegant French tailoring of Paris Resident Mai Van Bo, the second-ranking North Vietnamese negotiator. Tho, who is described as an "adviser" to his delegation, did not show up at last week's negotiating session, and will probably listen quietly for a while from the sidelines. From now on, though, his presence may enable the North Vietnamese to make more tactical decisions in Paris, without having to cable Hanoi for every jot and tittle of instruction. That could speed up the talks if Hanoi is ready to. And Tho may well be the man authorized to discuss substantive issues.

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