The Truce and A Silent Majority

TRYING to get out into the countryside to supervise the still shaky truce in South Viet Nam, an inspection team from the Four Party Joint Military Commission (the U.S., South Viet Nam, North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong) alighted from American helicopters in a soccer field at Ban Me Thuot, the Montagnard capital in the Central Highlands. Suddenly they were surrounded by a milling crowd of several hundred people, who threw stones and roughed up eight of the Communist representatives. A Saigon spokesman later apologized for the incident but claimed that the people had been "infuriated by Communist violations of the cease-fire." A Viet Cong representative said all V.C. participation in the field teams was being "temporarily suspended" because of "these humiliations."

The outburst of emotion demonstrated anew how difficult it will be to establish effective supervision of the ceasefire. A field team of the four-nation International Commission of Control and Supervision also ran into an unexpected problem: it could not even get into Quang Tri city, south of the DMZ, because that town was under a heavy North Vietnamese artillery barrage. Two full weeks after the signing of the settlement there still was no effective truce inspection anywhere in the country.

No Lines. South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu exaggerated only slightly when he declared that "there is no cease-fire at all." The ICCS chairman, Michel Gauvin of Canada, agreed. "The Joint Military Commission has as yet failed to get an effective cease-fire all over the country," he said. "It has failed to establish lines of demarcation between troops." Indeed, although the level of fighting was declining, there still were some 180 clashes a day--well above the level of many of the quieter periods of the war. For the entire cease-fire period so far, Saigon claimed 5,218 enemy dead and admitted that 870 of its own troops had been killed. In this fighting, the ARVN managed to clear all but one of the major roads around Saigon and claimed that it controlled virtually all the 220 hamlets that the Communists had tried to seize after the ceasefire.

The supervisory groups were mainly still concerned about preliminary matters. Members of both the ICCS and the Joint Military Commission began meeting, working out procedural details and, in some cases, settling into field offices. At My Tho in the Mekong Delta, for example, an ICCS observer team consisting of six Canadians, five Hungarians, nine Indonesians and five Poles took over the entire third floor of the town's Grand Hotel. They set up an op erations room plastered with 20 maps of their assigned region. Then they spent most of the week arguing about how to arrange for communications, transportation and accommodations at three outlying sites that they must monitor. Meanwhile, said one member, "All I know about cease-fire violations is what I can see and hear from the roof of the hotel."

The procedural details are vital, however, and it was no trifling matter when the ICCS agreed that English would be used as its official language.

After the years of enmity, it was also no table that representatives of the Viet Cong and the South Viet Nam government were actually meeting in Paris as the first step in setting up a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, which will organize new elections in South Viet Nam. The probings were limited, however; they primarily sought ways to get Foreign Minister-level talks started later in Saigon.

Ever so gradually, the struggle be tween the contending forces was chang ing from a military conflict to a political one. Off the highways, South Vietnamese pilots reported an increase of Viet Cong flags flying in rural areas of the Mekong Delta and in Military Region III surrounding Saigon. In the competition for political support, there were no spontaneous demonstrations against the Saigon government, as urged by the Communists, but no crowds paraded on behalf of it either. The dominant Vietnamese mood seemed to be what the French call attentiste (waiting it out). President Thieu also seemed to be turning defensively inward, making no effort to embrace Saigon's long-bickering factions and personalities in a united political front against the Communists. He began a round of consultations with political figures, but no genuine opposition leaders were among them. He also conferred with key military men, who generally oppose the settlement but who so far seem loyal to him. There have been no mass army desertions.

Apparently influenced by some strong advice from Vice President Spiro Agnew, who had visited him a week earlier on his eight-nation tour of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Thieu changed his tone abruptly in a Tet speech. Agnew reportedly had told Thieu that he must cooperate in carrying out the peace provisions and get his own house in order as well. In return, the U.S. would continue economic aid and as much military aid as the pact allows. Instead of complaining about the peace terms as he had done before, Thieu, in a public address, urged strict compliance with the provisions and even stressed the need to eradicate corruption throughout South Viet Nam. There were hints elsewhere in Saigon that Thieu might cut taxes and liberalize present laws that restrict political activities--all in an effort to make his regime more popular. These things have not yet happened, however, and the government seems uncertain how best to proceed.

Thieu appears to feel some doubts as to whether time is on his side. He passed the word to his negotiators in Paris that they should press the Viet Cong envoys there for elections to be held as quickly as possible. He apparently does not want to give the disciplined Communists too much opportunity to organize opposition against him. But perhaps not even an election will decide the allegiance of what a Polish delegate to the ICCS called "the great silent majority that supports neither side."

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