Wary U.S. Aid

He could have been a politician on a campaign swing. When U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz stepped from a helicopter at a refugee camp in Thailand six miles from the Kampuchean border last week, he was greeted by some 55,000 cheering Kampucheans waving American flags and carrying signs that read, GOD BLESS AMERICA and PLEASE RESCUE CAMBODIA. The normally impassive Secretary called the visit "a stirring experience." But Shultz, who stopped at the camp during a 13-day trip through Asia, remained wary of a U.S. commitment to Kampucheans fighting 160,000 Vietnamese troops occupying their country. Although the House of Representatives last week approved $5 million in aid to non-Communist Kampuchean resistance fighters, the Reagan Administration wants to limit its assistance to nonmilitary supplies. Congress, Shultz pointed out, could easily reverse itself.

Shultz's trip coincided with a series of diplomatic initiatives by Viet Nam. Shortly before the House vote on aid to Kampuchean resistance fighters, Hanoi promised to return the remains of 26 U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action in Viet Nam. In addition, Viet Nam said it would assist the U.S. in accounting for an estimated 2,464 other missing Americans.

Earlier, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach also proposed an end to Viet Nam's six-year occupation of Kampuchea, suggesting negotiated power sharing between Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Kampuchea's former head of state, and the Hanoi-backed regime of Heng Samrin. This could work, said Thach, only after a retreat into exile could be arranged for Pol Pot, the notorious Communist leader of Kampuchea's Khmer Rouge.

Although U.S. officials were pleased by Hanoi's pledge to return American MIAs, they doubted that Viet Nam was signaling a fundamental shift in policy. The Thach proposal shrewdly preceded the annual conference of the non-Communist Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where ASEAN foreign ministers groped for ways to bring about talks between Viet Nam and the Kampuchean insurgents. A plan calling for negotiations with a Vietnamese delegation that might include representatives of the Heng Samrin regime won the backing of resistance fighters, ASEAN nations and the U.S. But Viet Nam rejected the idea. One Vietnamese diplomat in Malaysia told TIME, "The proposal is a backward step. It does not help peace talks."