The Press TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1966. Pause, If Not Peace, In Vietnam

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30961, 18 January 1966, Page 10

The Press TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1966. Pause, If Not Peace, In Vietnam

When he made reference, in Mongolia during the weekend, to the war in Vietnam, the Soviet Communist Party leader, Mr Brezhnev, said that the Americans should recognise “ the justice of the “ Vietnamese people’s demands ” if they would end the fighting. This, of course, is merely playing with words. In President Ho Chi-Minh’s most recent context, a Hanoi broadcast on December 8, the National Liberation Front—the political arm of the Viet Cong —was described as “ the sole genuine representative *■ of the people of South Vietnam ”, The Viet Cong “ demands ” were equally circumscribed and exclusive. The United States, if it wanted negotiations, must “ stop its air attacks on the North, put an end *• to its aggression in the South, withdraw its troops “ from South Vietnam, and let the Vietnamese people “ settle by themselves their own affairs ”, This one-sided approach was once more flatly rejected by President Johnson in his State of the Union speech to Congress. He said that while there were no “ arbitrary limits ” to the Administration’s search for peace, “ we will act as we must to help protect the “ independence of the valiant people of South Viet- “ nam ”. American policy has throughout been consistent, to the extent that it repudiates the Communist assumption that anti-Communism does not exist—that the South Vietnamese have no right to recognition as a political entity. This recognition remains fundamental to the American conception of an acceptable settlement. The people of the South would have to decide the question of reunion with the North in genuinely free elections—not in elections engineered and controlled by the Communists. If, however, there is no sign of compromise yet on this vital issue, forces may be at work which could bring the parties together almost in spite of themselves. American opinion is in such a state of flux over Vietnam that Mr Johnson would probably welcome peace there at the moment above any other political development. He has indicated, indeed, that a just peace could lead to the eventual withdrawal of American forces from the whole of South-east Asia. Discounting Hanoi’s continued intransigence, the Communists also must want peace: a stepped-up war could become, for the north, virtually a war of extinction. In spite of the tone of current Russian comment, inveighing as usual against American “ aggression ”, Mr Shelepin will have had ample cause, on the basis of the mounting cost of Soviet aid to the Viet Cong, to leave some counsel of moderation in Hanoi. He is likely to have emphasised, as the “ Economist ” has suggested, that in the event of the war becoming hotter, China will have little to offer Hanoi “ but revolutionary advice and soldiers “ who might all too easily turn into occupying forces”. The pause in the bombing that is now to cover the period of the Vietnamese new year means, in effect, that it will have lasted a month. Hanoi will not be looking forward to the return of the bombers. And Mr Shelepin’s advice to President Ho may have been that he needs peace scarcely less than does Mr Johnson—if for different reasons. Mr Johnson’s special envoys, Mr Rusk and Mr Harriman, have found the apparent rigidity of the Viet Cong attitude matched by a determination in Saigon not to yield to Communist pressure. But if no-one in Vietnam is yet ready to bargain for peace terms, all the parties must appreciate the cost and danger of war on a more intense scale. The “ Economist ” thinks, indeed, that the mental climate may be changing in Vietnam. “ In particular ”, the journal said a few days ago, “ the Russians and the North Vietnamese have “ to face the fact that hopes of an easy Communist “ take-over in the South are receding The pro- “ longation of the war will cause more harm to North “ Vietnam than to America, and it is between these * two that the contest of wills chiefly lies. It is too “ early to say flatly that all will be well. But in the “ prevailing gloom, the smallest glimmer of light is “ welcome ”,