Another Pause in the Pursuit of Peace

IF peace was at last at hand, the grip was still proving slippery. The Oct. 31 "deadline" that Hanoi had set for the signing of the nine-point agreement came and went, the French government quietly put away the champagne that it had taken care to have chilled and ready at the old Majestic Hotel, and the war of words resumed. Instead of toasts, tensions rose on all three corners of the delicately balanced Viet Nam triangle.

In Washington, Henry Kissinger waited for word that Hanoi's Le Duc Tho would join him in Paris for the promised one final session to wrap up the peace package. On television, Richard Nixon repeated that he would not be "stampeded" into signing the agreement before it is "right." George McGovern replied bitterly that Nixon had embarked "not on a path to peace but a detour around Election Day." North Viet Nam's Paris spokesman Nguyen Than Le blasted the Administration as "dishonest" and demanded that it make a public "commitment" to sign the agreement as it stood. In Saigon, meanwhile, South Viet Nam President Nguyen Van Thieu escalated his fulminations of discontent by declaring that the plan was a shameless "surrender to the Communists."

The volley of debate was matched by a sharp rise in the fighting on the ground in South Viet Nam (see following story). As it increased, the end of the war that Kissinger had so persuasively limned a week ago seemed slightly more elusive. It appeared that Kissinger's final session of "no more than three or four days" in Paris might take five or six days, and then be followed by another round of talks in Saigon. But the White House still remained confident that an agreement will be signed probably by the end of November.

What was happening, Washington was convinced, was not an unraveling, but rather a frantic posturing in advance of a peace settlement. Hanoi has been squeezing Washington partly because it worries that despite U.S. reassurances Nixon might be tempted to stiffen his peace terms once the U.S. election is successfully out of his way.

In Saigon, Thieu was busily positioning himself as an independent patriot. The nine points? He damned the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord that is provided in the Kissinger plan to organize new elections as "a disguised coalition" with the Communists. A ceasefire? Thieu insisted that first Hanoi would have to pull all of the estimated 145,000 troops it has in the South back to North Viet Nam.

Solidarity. On South Viet Nam's National Day last week, cities and villages blossomed with the canary-yellow and crimson colors of the government flag. The display of unity was somewhat forced; by government edict, every Vietnamese family and business had to display the flag under threat of imprisonment, and those caught buying red and blue cloth--the Viet Cong colors --have been questioned or arrested. Even so, Thieu's strident solidarity campaign did seem to be winning him some highly qualified support. Retired General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, an old Thieu rival who has been maneuvering into position as a possible future "neutralist" leader, agreed "as a military man" with Thieu's objections to an in-place cease-fire that would divide South Viet Nam into separate zones of Communist and government control. Said Minh: "Who could police all those little spots?"

Thieu's stubbornness could hardly have been unforeseen in Washington. After all, his stonewalling of the Paris talks in 1968 had helped to bollix Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign and engineer the election of the more hawkish Richard Nixon. But the evidence suggests that Washington, having long failed to pressure Thieu into preparing himself politically for an eventual compromise settlement, was not quite ready for his delaying tactics. Kissinger has asserted that it was a matter of an "honest misunderstanding," but Hanoi nevertheless believed, at least at one point, that the U.S. was ready to sign on Oct. 31. On Oct. 22, four days after Kissinger's arrival in Saigon, Nixon sent a message to North Viet Nam's Premier Pham Van Dong in Hanoi indicating that the U.S. would try to wrap up the agreement by Halloween as promised. But the very next day, Oct. 23, as the differences between Thieu and Kissinger hardened into a deadlock, Nixon sent regrets that the date would have to be postponed.

Thieu is plainly the main stumbling block to an agreement, but some Administration officials suggest critically that the White House has been eager to slow down the headlong pace of the negotiations for its own reasons. For one thing, a delay would give the Pentagon time to rush planes, artillery and other items of military hardware to Saigon in quantities that would not be permitted after a ceasefire. The most important reason for the slowdown, the argument goes, was that the President wanted the signing to come after Nov. 7 so that he could not be accused of timing the agreement for crass political advantage. In fact, of course, the White House reaps the benefits of its pre-election announcement that "peace is at hand," but is clear of the doubts and recriminations that may well follow when the papers are actually signed.

Questions of posture and politics aside, however, the details that Kissinger wants to settle in Paris are not inconsequential. The major items: THE CEASEFIRE. Saigon and Washington want the machinery to supervise a cease-fire in place when it is declared (not within 30 days as the hastily drafted proposal now suggests); they also want assurances that a cease-fire in South Viet Nam will be accompanied by roughly simultaneous cease-fires in Laos and Cambodia. Other matters have to be resolved, including the size of the International Supervisory Force, which will apparently be provided by five countries: Poland, Canada, Hungary, Indonesia and France.

THE POLITICAL FUTURE. Saigon and Washington are also disturbed by ambiguities in the wording of that part of the draft agreement concerning the nature of the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord. That is the three-part body of Communists, "neutrals" and Thieu loyalists that is supposed to set up new elections during the rather hazy period in which the patchwork-partitioned country is to have two parallel governments--the Saigon regime and the Communists' Provisional Revolutionary Government. The North Vietnamese describe the council as a "governmental" structure, which is anathema to the Thieu regime. The U.S. wants it clearly labeled an "administrative" structure, though the distinction is fuzzy at best. An accurate description will ultimately be determined by how the council defines its own role.

TROOP WITHDRAWAL. Because Hanoi has never been willing to acknowledge the presence of its forces in the South, the nine-point agreement specifies removal of "all foreign" troops (including Hanoi's) from Cambodia and Laos, but only a U.S. withdrawal (within 60 days) from South Viet Nam. Presumably, one of Washington's major concessions was to allow the North's 145,000 troops to remain in South Viet Nam in exchange for Hanoi's letting Thieu stay around. To mollify Saigon on the troop matter, Washington is privately urging Hanoi to pull some of its regulars out of South Viet Nam as a gesture of good will, especially the 35,000 or so in the weakly defended areas just below the Demilitarized Zone. In general, Thieu wants specific guarantees--that North Vietnamese troops will not simply withdraw into the old border "sanctuaries" in Laos and Cambodia, that Moscow and Peking will live up to their promises (given to Washington in private) not to rebuild Hanoi's military machine massively after a ceasefire.

In Washington, Thieu's options are perceived to be so limited that no one doubts that he will eventually go along with the bargain. When the details are settled with the North Vietnamese, Nixon promised last week, the U.S. is "going to sign without one day's delay." Underneath all the surface vituperation, both sides were actually making progress on lesser matters. Word leaked out of Washington last week, for instance, that agreement was close on the makeup of the Paris-based "guarantee conference" that would oversee the end of hostilities in Indochina.* In Paris, meanwhile, workmen were preparing a giant round table in a chandeliered conference room in the Majestic for the signing.

Dicey. But what was needed now was some urgent work in Saigon. Thieu was playing a dicey game--defying both U.S. pressure for a settlement and the yearning of the Vietnamese for an end to the fighting. Cabled TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud from Saigon: "If the South Vietnamese feel abandoned by the Americans, they could violently turn against their former benefactors. But if they feel that Thieu is standing in the way of peace in order to satisfy his own selfish ambitions, they could turn against him. At this stage, Thieu is doing almost nothing to prepare his people for peace. Instead, he is exhorting them to eternal vigilance and more war. Over the long haul, the best this program can produce is probably apathy; at worst, it could lead to anti-Thieu violence." But one thing seemed certain: the posturing on all sides would have to end soon or the compromise reached after so many grim years could slip away.

*The likely members: the U.S.. Russia, China, France Britain, North Viet Nam, South Viet Nam, the P.R.G., Poland, Canada, Hungary, Indonesia and the U.N. in the person of Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.