Vietnam Fighting Likely To Be Heavy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 15

Vietnam Fighting Likely To Be Heavy

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, June 17. The outlook now is for heavy fighting in Vietnam followed by another effort to arrange a cease-fire before the constitutional assembly elections in September, says James Reston of the “New York Times.” Reston continued:

Officials in Washington are increasingly confident, In spite of the political turmoil in Saigon, that the American expeditionary force will be able to pur&h the enemy severely in the next two

months, and that this may

improve the chances of negotiating a 30 or 60-day truce before the voting. Similar hopes have, of course, been dieappointed often in the past but there is now a great deal of private talk high in the Johnson government about the necessity of trying to halt the fighting long enough to create order for the elections. President Johnson’s recent talks with Senator William Fulbright, of Arkansas, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, and other advocates of compromise in Vietnam do not indicate any real change in the President’s present Vietnam strategy, but he has been showing interest in another major peace offensive which he apparently thinks will have a chance only if the fighting in the next few months succeeds in destroying the main North Vietnamese regulars now south of the There have recently been

what the Administration calls “travellers’ tales” coming out of North Vietnam about the possibility of peace talks, but these seem to be based on an assumption among the Communist leaders that the United States is so fed up with the political instability in South Vietnam that it would welcome a face-saving formula for giving up the battle. President Johnson is not interested in any such arrangement. He apparently believes that the United States has sufficient power in Vietnam now to smash the crack regiments Hanoi will commit to the war during the monsoon battles, and that once this is done a later peace offensive may succeed where others have failed. This is still the basic point of conflict between the President on the one hand and Senators Fulbright and Mansfield on the other. ,n The President and the Secretary of State, Mr Dean

Rusk, are said to believe that it will not be necessary to take on the entire North Vietnamese army of 400,000 men in a long war but merely to demonstrate that it can wipe out the main divisions. The senators fear this is just one more optimistic assumption that will prove to be wrong. The Administration thinks the political struggle for power in Peking will increase Hanoi’s freedom to negotiate a compromise and it does not share Senator Mansfield’s hope that negotiations with the Chinese now would do good.

What changes there are in Washington now are mainly tactical, personal and political.

The Administration wants to minimise the political opposition at home to its policies, fearing that this opposition will deceive the enemy and prolong the war, and its method of doing this is to talk about the possibility of a cease-fire later.