FULL CIRCLE IN PARIS

All things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle. --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

WHEN the history of the Viet Nam peace negotiations is written, posterity will probably look with astonishment on what has proved to be the most important procedural obstacle to getting down to substantive business: the shape of the table at which the participants sit. For ten weeks of often absurd haggling, the parties in Paris--the U.S., South Viet Nam, North Viet Nam and the National Liberation Front--have argued about whether the table at which to discuss a settlement of the Viet Nam war should be square, oblong, rectangular, oval or any number of imaginative mutations. Last week, after studying nearly two dozen designs, the negotiators at last agreed on the shape of the table: it will be round. A few days later, they sat down as a group for the first time to get on with the deadly serious business of seeking a peace settlement.

The round table represented a compromise that did not completely satisfy anybody, but it left intact the vital interests of all parties and permitted each to view the conference in whatever way it chose. It satisfies the Communist demand that the Front sit down as an equal partner in a four-party meeting. At the same time, since the table will be flanked on two sides by smaller, rectangular tables for secretariat personnel, the allies can point to that as proof that the conference is a two-sided affair. Picayune though that may seem, it is an important point; it allows the U.S. and South Viet Nam to deal with the Front without according it recognition. In the weeks to come, the Communists are certain to intensify the pressure for such recognition.

Full Support. The breakthrough came after weeks of intense diplomatic maneuvering. In late December, the U.S., clearly hoping for a turn in the negotiations before the end of Lyndon Johnson's term, had begun pressuring Saigon to accept a Hanoi offer of an undemarcated round table, with the provision that the North Vietnamese would waive their demand for name plates and flags for the four delegations. Saigon demurred, still fearful that sitting at a round table with the Front would imply recognition.

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Dean Rusk asked William Rogers, the Secretary of State-designate, to elicit Richard Nixon's views on the U.S. stand. Rogers complied and later advised the State Department that the incoming administration fully supported the compromise advocated by Johnson's outgoing team.

Ready To Do Business. Last week Colonel Ha Van Lau, North Viet Nam's deputy negotiator, surprised his U.S. counterpart, Cyrus Vance, by resubmitting a table design that Hanoi had haughtily rejected once before: a round table flanked by two smaller rectangular tables. Such a layout, Lau said, would be acceptable, provided the smaller tables could be separated slightly from the big table (by about 18 inches, as it turned out). He also accepted the suggestion that the allies speak first, to be followed by Hanoi and then the Front; earlier, Hanoi had demanded that the speaking order be determined by drawing lots. The 80-minute meeting between Vance and Lau, held in secrecy in a Paris suburb, was followed by a shorter one the next day. Then the agreement was announced--matter-of-factly, with a minimum of polemics and with neither side claiming a diplomatic victory. Said U.S. Chief Negotiator Averell Harriman, who will yield his post to Henry Cabot Lodge this week: "We did not give in, and we did not expect them to give in. Meanwhile, we can go ahead and do business."

By week's end, only two days before Johnson left the White House, the four delegations met in the French Foreign Ministry's International Conference Center, the old Hotel Majestic on the Avenue Kleber. They assembled around a new 151-foot diameter main table, built the day before and covered with green baize cloth by French carpenters under the supervision of officials from the Quai d'Orsay. It was the same room in which the U.S. and North Viet Nam had begun preliminary talks on a settlement last May 13.

Propaganda Bombardment. Some procedural matters remained--primarily those that would determine the conference rules. At the end of the first session, however, Vance announced that all sides had reached full agreement on the procedures to be followed in later meetings. The conference is therefore free to get down to substantive matters this week. One is a mutual troop withdrawal, though it was announced last week that U.S. and South Vietnamese officials have begun working out a timetable to begin bringing home some G.I.s this year. Other issues include the political future of South Viet Nam and the territorial integrity of neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

That, of course, is when the real bargaining will begin--and probably go on, and on, while the war still rages.

Johnson, though elated that a breakthrough had been achieved under his aegis, warned that the U.S. would have to be patient and that "we must pursue peace as diligently as we have fought aggression." Nixon, equally elated because the negotiations can now turn from niggling procedures to matters of real substance, also expressed his pleasure.

Both Johnson and Nixon, of course, are aware of the cruel fact that since the parley with the North Vietnamese got underway last May, some 8,000 Americans and many times that number of South and North Vietnamese have died in the war. Both also know that, at least in the opening weeks, the Paris conferees can be expected to bombard each other with their favorite propaganda themes. Some pessimists in Washington, as a matter of fact, expect no major progress before midsummer. The bargaining, as Bunker put it in Saigon, will be "long, tough, complex and arduous." But at least there will be bargaining, and not just posturing.

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