The Front in Paris

If the South Vietnamese delegation coming to the Paris peace talks would like the name of a good little bistro where the Bordeaux wine and the Camembert cheese are supportables, they could always ask the Viet Cong. No sooner had Lyndon Johnson announced the bombing halt last month than representatives of the National Liberation Front, the political arm of the Viet Cong, descended on Paris proclaiming their status as "equal partner" with the U.S., the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese. While the South Vietnamese dithered over whether to attend the talks, the Front's representatives in Paris quickly set out to portray the N.L.F. as something that it is not--a government with the power to speak for itself and the people it controls.

To help shed the image that the Viet Cong are only jungle fighters in black pajamas, the Front pointedly named a chic woman to head its delegation. She is Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, 41, a member of the N.L.F. Central Committee and vice president of the South Viet Nam Woman's Liberation Union. A lifelong revolutionary who was first jailed by the French in 1950 for leading a demonstration against a U.S. arms shipment, Madame Binh is a well-traveled veteran of the Communist diplomatic circuit. She has represented the N.L.F. at conferences in Moscow, Peking and Cairo, and at a congress of the Women's Union of France in Paris earlier this year. Trim and articulate, her black hair swept back, Madame Binh has skillfully smiled her way through receptions and carefully stuck to the N.L.F. line when confronted by curious Western newsmen who hang on her every move. L'Express described her as "a sort of Joan of Arc of the rice paddies."

To enhance the N.L.F.'s aura of independence from Hanoi, Madame Binh and her five colleagues have taken special pains to dissociate themselves publicly from the representatives of North Viet Nam. She whisks about Paris in a rented black Citroen DS-21 flanked by two motorcycle policemen; the Viet Cong flag, a yellow star against a field of red and blue, flaps conspicuously from the fender. Her limousine has stopped at the Quai D'Orsay, where she paid a courtesy call on Herve Al-phand, former French Ambassador to the U.S. and now secretary-general of the French foreign office. She has attended East bloc receptions, called on the Algerians, Cubans and Cambodians, held teas for leading French Communist women, and visited pro-Communist student organizations. Wherever she goes on this circuit, Madame Binh monotonously hammers her theme: the N.L.F. is the "principal force" in South Viet Nam because it represents four-fifths of the land area of South Viet Nam, and President Thieu's government "represents no one." (According to allied figures, the Viet Cong control only 15.3% of South Viet Nam's 17.4 million people.) The N.L.F. knows very well that it will not be accepted as spokesman for South Viet Nam. But it is trying to achieve enough legitimacy to work its way into a coalition government in Saigon, or drive a wedge between Washington and Saigon.

The first cracks have already begun to show in the bold front put up by the N.L.F. Despite its demands last week for its own name plates, license plates and flags at what it calls the "Conference a Quatre"--a four-sided conference--the N.L.F. has not convinced Charles de Gaulle's government of its independence. The North Vietnamese cars bear the green-and-orange plates of the corps diplomatique. The N.L.F. has an ordinary black-and-white French license plate. South Viet Nam maintains a legation in Paris. The North Vietnamese have the lowest diplomatic status available, that of a mission. The N.L.F. has no status at all. Because the N.L.F. delegates all carry North Vietnamese passports for travel purposes, the French helped them avoid the embarrassment of showing a Hanoi passport by admitting them on a laissez-passer.

Lady of the Lake. The N.L.F.'s first quarters were on the Boulevard President Roosevelt on the western outskirts of Paris, but fighting the traffic from there to the headquarters of the North Vietnamese delegation, in the Red-belt suburb of Choisy-le-Roi, proved nearly as difficult as a trip down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The N.L.F. soon moved to the Chalet du Lac, a rented villa ($1,200 a month) in the sleepy, suburban town of Verrieres les Buisson, eight miles southwest of the Paris city limits, but only 15 minutes' drive from the North Vietnamese headquarters, where the two delegations can coordinate strategy.

The three-story cream-colored chalet, with its red-tiled roof, sits on a knoll in a one-acre garden of pine and chestnut trees. Those who have been inside the villa describe its furnishings as "early Mussolini--pretty ugly stuff." In the entrance stand a wooden cupboard, a nondescript sofa and a desk manned by a Frenchman who appears to be a security man assigned by the French Communist Party. In the second-floor salon where Madame Binh has her office and receives visitors, the original pictures have been taken down (with the hooks left hanging), and portraits of N.L.F. Leader Nguyen Huu Tho and a young Viet Cong hero executed by the South Vietnamese stare down at a television set, several easy chairs, a chest topped by the N.L.F. standard and a conference table covered with green cloth, surrounded by eight straight-backed chairs. Through the bay windows of the salon, Madame Binh looks out on a small lake with its own island and six elegant white swans. Most of the petit bourgeois neighborhood took the Viet Cong's arrival in stride, but when the N.L.F. hung out its flag, a French patriot across the street indignantly hung one French tricolor from his roof and another from his front gate.

The delegation lives frugally. The male members sleep two to a bedroom. The only servant is a Vietnamese resident of Paris who cooks traditional native dishes. A handyman rakes the leaves. Madame Binh managed a couple of shopping tours and purchased a $70 full-length coat and a $40 car coat as protection against the Paris winter. She also bought a pair of gloves, two Vietnamese tunics--and some perfume detected to be Chanel No. 5.

Near Ky. Once the peace talks move to substantive matters, Madame Binh is expected to slip from her role as head of the delegation to concentrate on the 60,000 Vietnamese expatriates and exiles living in the Paris area. She begins the battle for their allegiance with the Saigon delegation, knowing that many of the Paris Vietnamese are neutralists.

The N.L.F.'s chief negotiators are likely to be chosen from a group that ineludes: Huynh Tan Phat, vice president of the N.L.F. and one of the architects of the Tet offensive, described by the French as a "nationalist" who would like to shed some of Hanoi's influence; Nguyen Van Hieu, the Front's ambassador to Cambodia, a hard-lining Communist under strong North Vietnamese influence; Tran Buu Kiem, the Front's shadow Foreign Minister and a member of the N.L.F. central committee. The Front has its own press office, a $650-a-month apartment in the elegant 16th arrondissement, near the Bois de Boulogne. It is also near the newly leased Paris apartment of South Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, leader of the Saigon delegation. The N.L.F., professing its own independence of Hanoi, sneers at Ky as a fantoche (puppet) of Washington.

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