Preparing to Deal for Peace

For four hours, crusty Graham Martin, U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam, tried vainly to get through to South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu on the telephone. The next day he hopped into his black Cadillac limousine for the short six-block drive down Unity Boulevard from the U.S. embassy to Thieu's gleaming Independence Palace. The President was in, and Martin was grim. For months he had been the most diehard American supporter of Thieu. Now he had a bitter task. He was conveying a message that had originated with the Viet Cong's representatives in Paris: beginning midnight Sunday, Thieu had exactly 48 hours to resign, or Saigon would be leveled.

Said a high embassy official later: "The old man had to lean on him and substantially." The casual, colloquial phrase summed up a momentous fact: the U.S. was finally forced to abandon the man on whom for years it had staked its Viet Nam policy--and, indeed, finally forced to abandon Viet Nam. Even as Ambassador Martin returned to his embassy, the last remnants of the once mighty American presence, the few thousand citizens who remained in the country, were hastening to Tan Son Nhut airport for evacuation flights home. For North Viet Nam, Thieu's departure represented a stunning triumph. After 30 years of fighting French legionnaires, fellow Vietnamese and American G.I.s, after standing up to the technology and will of the world's greatest power, this small agrarian land--albeit one well supplied by China and the Soviet Union--was finally on the verge of victory. What durable, wily old Ho Chi Minh had insisted on, what his heirs in Hanoi had continued to demand--the departure of the Americans and their chosen government in the South--was finally coming to pass.

There was not the faintest hope that Saigon could yet reverse the tide of the battle; the military situation in favor of the Communists was unquestionably irreversible. Nor was there any chance that the U.S. might intervene to prevent a Communist takeover. After more than two decades of various degrees of American involvement in Viet Nam, President Ford last week declared with utter finality that for the U.S., the war was over. A massive Communist force, which had closed in on Saigon from all sides with staggering speed, lay waiting after abruptly halting its advance. Unmistakably, the battlefield lull meant that Saigon had one last chance to avoid total military defeat. It could form a new "peace government" that would be acceptable to the Communists; that government would then arrange what would amount to a negotiated surrender to the Communists. No specific terms were spelled out, but Hanoi and the Provisional Revolutionary Government made it clear that Saigon had at most a few days to take decisive action. After that, the encircling juggernaut would spring into action.

In essence, the South Vietnamese were being asked to give up without further fight. In a week of desperate political scrambling, Saigon sought a way to do just that--but a way that would preserve the appearances of legality and mask the fact that the Communists were haughtily dictating terms. President Nguyen Van Thieu, who had survived a decade of intense but disorganized political opposition while fighting a devastating war, tearfully announced his resignation. Soon afterward he departed for Taipei aboard a U.S. military transport; from there he was expected to fly into exile--possibly in England or Switzerland. Thieu was replaced by his aging and feeble Vice President, Tran Van Huong, 71. Almost immediately, the Communists imperiously declared Huong unacceptable. This development raised grave questions.

Should Huong remain President, in defiance of the Communists, ready to fight if necessary but trying to open negotiations with the enemy? Should he step aside and make way for a new chief of state more acceptable to the conquerors at the gates? Would the Communists spare Saigon in any case? At week's end Huong still clung stubbornly to the presidency. But it seemed clear that Saigon would have to replace him or risk destruction. The almost certain successor: General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, the neutralist Buddhist who, in a still-remembered moment of glory, helped overthrow the dictatorial regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 (see box page 15).

There was a time when Minh might have proved to be the catalyst for those groups in the South that favored a compromise political settlement with the Communists; had that happened, there might have been at least some chance of sharing power. Now it was too late. His imminent return to leadership symbolized the final failure of the American-supported effort in Viet Nam and the defeat of those groups who had led the war against the Communists.

Though Thieu carefully described his resignation as voluntary, it was virtually his only choice, even without the push from Washington. In the days leading up to his announcement, Communist troops had made a mockery of any claim that Saigon could yet mobilize a vigorous defense. The badly battered ARVN 18th Division put up a heroic stand at the provincial capital of Xuan Loc, 40 miles northeast of Saigon, but a formidable force of three North Vietnamese divisions, after taking some severe casualties from government air strikes, simply wore them down. When the exhausted remnants of Xuan Loc's defenders straggled into Saigon early last week, it was plain that the military initiative lay entirely with the Communists.

Deadly accurate Communist 130-mm. guns had already neutralized Saigon's huge airbase at Bien Hoa, and SA-2 and SA-7 missiles were trained on Tan Son Nhut airport. A single regiment could easily cut off Saigon's sole escape route to the sea by severing Route 15, leading to the port of Vung Tau. "Every time we blink, the map changes," said one military analyst.

In all, by early last week there were at least 130,000 Communist troops surrounding Saigon, squared off against just 60,000 ARVN troops. And while South Vietnamese forces were steadily depleted through desertions and encounters with the enemy, the North Vietnamese forces kept growing. General Nguyen Van Toan, commander of the military region around the capital, privately conceded that the battle had been lost; so did most of ARVN's top leadership. "Their morale and their leadership are just flowing away," said a senior military observer who only a week ago was still hopeful that Saigon could yet pull off "a small miracle." At the Pentagon it was readily acknowledged that if the North Vietnamese wanted total military victory, they could have it in a matter of days.

Spurning the military option for the time being, the P.R.G. issued its 48-hour ultimatum to Thieu. Around the same time, South Viet Nam's top generals met with Thieu at Independence Palace and bluntly presented him with a message of their own: his resignation was the only way to avoid a disastrous military showdown with the Communists. Thieu accepted the verdict on the spot.

That very evening the iron gates of Independence Palace were thrown open, and black limousines began rolling up the long driveway, carrying South Viet Nam's 159 Deputies, 60 Senators, its judiciary and top generals. All had been summoned on just two hours' notice. The helicopter of Premier Nguyen Ba Can fluttered overhead and set down on the palace grounds. Under unbearable pressure, having utterly lost his credibility as South Viet Nam's leader, Thieu announced that he was stepping down.

His rambling, hastily prepared 90-minute valediction was bitter and recriminatory. He denounced Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the U.S. by name and Congress and the public by implication. It was the loss of U.S. aid, he said, that caused crushing defeats in the field and reduced South Viet Nam to little more than a city-state in just six weeks. Specifically, he condemned Washington for failing to fulfill promises, made at the time the Paris accords were signed, to the effect that the U.S. would, in his words, "immediately and vigorously supply South Viet Nam" in the event of a full-scale Communist offensive. Tears flowing down his cheeks, Thieu then announced: "I depart today. I ask my countrymen--the armed forces and religious groups--to forgive me my past mistakes I made while in power. The country and I will be grateful to you. I am very undeserving. I am resigning, but I am not deserting."

In the days following Thieu's resignation, Saigon scrambled to forge a new government acceptable to the Communists. A first obstacle to a quick political settlement of the war was posed by the Communists themselves. Speaking through representatives in Paris, they established as preconditions for negotiations: 1) "all U.S. military personnel and civilians disguised as military personnel leave Viet Nam," and 2) the new "peace government" have no connection with the former U.S.-supported regime. The government led by Huong, the Communists said, was simply a reincarnation of "the Thieu clique." "Tran Van Huong is not Nguyen Van Thieu, but he is Thieu's brother," said P.R.G. Representative Phan Van Ba in Paris. Added North Viet Nam's ambassador, Vo Van Sung: "Messieurs Huong and Thieu are Tweedledum and Tweedledee [bonnet blanc et blanc bonnet]!" The Communist intention was evidently to keep the pressure on Saigon--using the potent threat of an imminent military assault--to come up with a truly neutralist government that would exclude the hard-line antiCommunists.

Thieu had always bitterly fought the neutralists and kept them from power. A cautious, secretive man, Thieu spent the past eight years building up a political apparatus that was personally loyal to him. The son of a humble fisherman from Ninh Chu on the South China Sea and a graduate of the French military academy at Dalat, he had based his career on unfaltering antiCommunism. After World War II, he fought in the French colonial army against Ho Chi Minh's Communist-dominated independence movement. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he steadily moved up the ladder under Ngo Dinh Diem, also a Catholic. Diem was overthrown in 1963, but Thieu continued to rise, becoming head of state in the military regime. By 1967 he had astutely outmaneuvered the then Premier, Nguyen Cao Ky, to become President in a new civilian-run, constitutional government. With massive American help, Thieu led the country through eight years of war against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, always inflexibly opposed to any sort of political compromise. "We have to kill the Communists to the last man before we have peace," he said in 1972. He built the most stable government the South Vietnamese had known since the early years of Diem, but like Diem he distrusted any opposition. In the end, he pushed many competent, non-Communist figures into bitter opposition.

Among them was Big Minh, the leader to whom Saigon's diverse groupings were turning last week as the best person to head the "peace government" demanded by the Communists. He seemed the only candidate with sufficient prestige to control the South Vietnamese military while negotiating for a transition of power to a Communist-dominated coalition government. Also, Minh had once been mentioned by Viet Cong Foreign Minister Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh as a transition figure acceptable to the Communists.

As the week progressed, Minh's backing became almost unanimous. Former Premier and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, who just a month ago seemed to be making his own bid for power, began trying to organize pro-Minh sentiment within the armed forces. Politicians, religious and opposition leaders added their backing; even the powerful leader of the An Quang Pagoda group, the Venerable Thich Tri Quang, issued an unprecedented personal endorsement.

Despite this, a new snag soon developed. Most of Saigon's leaders urged that Minh become Premier in full charge of the government, with Huong remaining as nothing more than a symbolic head of state. From the beginning, however, Minh insisted that he be chief of state--with real powers.

After a vain two-day search for a substitute, the leading generals accepted Minh's conditions. But then a new obstacle appeared in the form of Huong himself. Asthmatic and nearly blind, Huong sensed a last opportunity to play a historic role. In his acceptance speech, he surprised everyone by vowing to "fight until the troops die or the country is lost" and to "be buried with his soldiers." While stubbornly insisting that he remain the legitimate President of South Viet Nam, he later seemed to adopt a less drastic position, promising to start negotiations with the Communists. The feeble old man, who everyone assumed could easily be moved aside for the good of the country, proved to be hard to move. To one caller trying to persuade him to step down, he maintained somewhat pompously: "Thieu ran away from destiny; it has now come to me."

Still, Huong was hardly in a position to shape that destiny singlehanded. He made one valiant effort to establish his credentials as a peacemaker, offering to send a government minister to Hanoi to open up direct negotiations; the North Vietnamese firmly rebuffed the overture. Huong then made a dramatic, ceremonious appearance at South Viet Nam's National Assembly. Speaking in halting gasps, wearing dark glasses, he told the legislators that it was for them to decide if he should stay in office or make way for General Minh. "Now our ally has abandoned us and we have to defend our fatherland alone," he warned, "but by doing that Saigon may become a sea of fire and a mound of bones. I wish to avoid this."

Astonishingly, the Assembly refused to take the initiative and told Huong that he had the power to make his momentous decision himself. He would have to act quickly. Most observers in South Viet Nam were convinced that Saigon was running out of time. Already, North Vietnamese forces had responded to the capital's indecision by launching what could turn into a major offensive against Ba Ria, which controls Saigon's escape route to the sea. For the first time in two years, they also lobbed several rockets on Saigon itself.

Even as Huong was trying to tough it out, however, Minh's acceptance speech was being written. It would be realistic, said one of the general's associates, making no reference to the "lost" provinces or any hope of regaining them. It would reject U.S. "interference" in Viet Nam's internal affairs. Most important, it would suggest negotiations to set up a council for national reconciliation to organize national elections.

Privately, Minh and his advisers admit that elections may never take place. They would thus accept a government consisting of Communists, neutralists and token anti-Communists that would undoubtedly be dominated by the pro-Communist P.R.G. Nobody in Minh's camp believes that the Communists can be denied the lion's share of power, but a few believe that a political settlement will enable the non-Communists to exert some influence. "You can hope to have a solution that will give an opportunity to the non-Communist side to prepare for a new life," says a Minh adviser. "Forming a neutralist regime in the South is better for its non-Communists than the results of a military victory. We can even hope that we can change some of the political traditions in the North in adopting an attitude that is more flexible for non-Communists."

As for the Communists, apart from their proclaimed attachment to the goal of reconciliation and concord, they too would probably benefit from a flexible approach, even one that allowed for an interim neutralist government. In the Saigon region, a political compromise would avoid the chaos and dislocations of a military siege. Some pessimists believe that the North is bent on a dramatic battle for Saigon. But reducing the city to rubble would increase the likelihood of bitter-end opposition to Communist control by the many well-organized political groups within South Viet Nam--groups like the Buddhists of the militant An Quang Pagoda faction, the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious sects, and powerful Catholics like Father Tranh Huu Thanh, who organized effective protests against the Thieu government, not to mention the many thousands of police, militiamen and regular soldiers.

A complete military victory would create problems for the Communists," says a close associate of Big Minh. "Problems of stability, problems of security, political problems. It is much better for them if the first step is by political solution." Even if Big Minh manages to get negotiations started, however, the Communists could still launch limited or even all-out attacks around Saigon as a reminder to the new "third force" government of who was really in control. One likely target would be Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport, the scene of the ongoing evacuation of both Americans and Vietnamese. In any case many analysts believe that the Communists are determined to be in Saigon in time for the May 19 celebrations of Ho Chi Minh's birthday. "They want to inherit Ho Chi Minh-grad intact," a South Vietnamese official said sardonically. "Half the industry in the country is situated between Saigon and Bien Hoa."

At week's end Saigonese were clinging to the hope that a military showdown would never come about. In the capital, blue and gold banners that would have been banned only a week ago rippled over busy streets: FOR PEACE AND NEGOTIATION, NOT BLOODSHED.

Few South Vietnamese doubt that essentially all this means capitulation to the Communists. Nor does the President of the U.S. doubt it. The Ford Administration was making its own capitulation--to the insurmountable resistance both in Congress and among the public to continued U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. In the wake of Thieu's resignation, the President told 5,000 cheering Tulane students in New Orleans: "Today America can again regain the sense of pride that existed before Viet Nam, but it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished--as far as America is concerned." Contrary to some of his earlier rhetoric, he urged that "we stop refighting the battles and recriminations of the past."

Ford knew that in foreign ministries around Asia, a triumphant and emboldened Hanoi is certain to make its influence felt most immediately. Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, figurehead ruler of the Khmer Rouge insurgents who now control his country, made that point in its most extreme form when he boasted last week: "The U.S. won't be able to hold on to Taiwan forever; the same goes for South Korea. In Thailand the people will also rise. How long will it take? Not very long." As if in reply, Ford said: "These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world."

A relieved Congress approved funds ($327 million) for humanitarian aid and to finance the evacuation of Americans and Vietnamese. Ford seemed acutely aware that he was closing out a long chapter in American history. "It's been a pretty long era," Ford told reporters en route back to Washington. The withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnamese affairs had lifted some burdens from his Administration, he said, "but it's added others--we'll have to wait and see how it balances out."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.