VIETNAM’S CRISIS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27643, 27 April 1955, Page 13

VIETNAM’S CRISIS

“Drift Towards Civil War”

WASHINGTON, April 25. France and the United States were badly split about measures to check the rapid drift towards civil war in South Vietnam, authoritative sources said today. French and United States diplomats met in Washington today to try to map out a common policy towards stabilising the government in Saigon. General Lawton Collins, the special Presidential envoy to Vietnam, gave Mr Eisenhower an assessment of the emergency.

An official source said that Vietnam now ranked close to Formosa in terms of United States assessment of the world’s trouble-spots. Diplomats in touch with the French and American talks on Vietnam regarded it as significant that General Collins did not name the Premier, Mr Ngo Dinh Diem, on his return from Saigon, when he said: “We are behind the legal government of Vietnam.” An official explained that the United States did mot support Mr Diem as a personality, but as the head of a constitutional government. The difference with France has arisen mainly over the United States position that the rebellious sects and factions in Vietnam should not be allowed to shoot their way into the government. France has held that the only realistic solution to the threat of civil war lay in giving the various factions representation in the government . A Paris message said that leaders of the dissident Binh Xuven and Hoa Hao sects in Vietnam rejected an appeal from Mr Diem for co-operation. Paris sources say it seems inevitable that Mr Diem’s Government will fall. The sects’ private armies have been besieging Saigon since Mr Diem refused their demands to broaden his Government.