Cease-Fire Strategies

As Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger arrived home last week after two days of secret negotiations in Paris with North Viet Nam's Le Due Tho, a high White House official confided that the two sides had been "talking seriously, very seriously." He also warned that "it would be wrong to conclude that a settlement is in sight." Apparently the North Vietnamese were coming forth with serious and detailed, if still secret proposals on how they would share power in the South.

Hanoi publicly insists that any postwar government should consist of representatives of the present South Vietnamese regime, the National Liberation Front and a neutral third party; that would obviously set the stage for an accommodation between the Communists and the other factions in the government once the Americans departed. But the official North Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan suggested last week that Hanoi would accept "necessary measures to ensure that neither side dominates the political life in South Viet Nam," at least for a transitional period. In that case, the North Vietnamese would be bridgeably close to President Nixon's proposal of last May. He offered a ceasefire, followed by total U.S. withdrawal in four months if American P.O.W.s were released and a political settlement negotiated "between the Vietnamese themselves."

The key problem in any settlement would be the status of South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu. Hanoi still insists on his departure, while the most that Washington has offered is that he would resign one month before elections were held. In recent weeks, U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker has reportedly urged Thieu to make overtures to the Viet Cong and neutralist elements that might be included in a future government, but any such suggestion has been met with blustery defiance. In a speech nominally aimed at the French but probably intended for the Americans, Thieu said, "I severely warn the colonialists against interfering in the internal affairs of the South Vietnamese people and providing comfort to the North Vietnamese invaders, either by words or deeds."

Meantime Communist troops, according to U.S. intelligence sources, have been ordered to prepare for a cease-fire by extending their control in every way possible. They already dominate South Viet Nam's eight northern provinces, including the Central Highlands and several districts in the once secure Mekong Delta (see map). Nearly all of that control is a direct result of the Easter offensive. So far, they have no significant hold on population centers, which may explain their recent thrusts into Quang Ngai province south of Danang, South Viet Nam's second largest city.

Of late, U.S. embassy officials in Saigon have suggested that since the South Vietnamese control 90% of the population, they should also control the land--that is, in any cease-fire agreement, Communist forces would be required to pull back to thinly populated "regrouping areas" along the Laotian and Cambodian borders. Though the regrouping notion has occasionally surfaced before, it represents no more than an optimum hope, and a forlorn one. Hanoi insists that any cease-fire must recognize "the actual realities," with each side having political control in areas its troops control. Washington is not likely to jeopardize chances for a ceasefire on so dubious a point.

The battlefield last week seemed to be in a lull--of the sort before a storm. U.S. analysts in Saigon unanimously predict a major new drive by the Communists this month in any of the four military regions--though probably not of the intensity of the Easter offensive. Two North Vietnamese divisions have been moving south gradually to the area northwest of Saigon, though no one expects a main-force assault on the capital. Instead, analysts believe that the outlook for the Saigonese at worst is for a series of rocket, sapper and commando attacks.

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