State Department Doubts Hanoi’s Seriousness

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 11

State Department Doubts Hanoi’s Seriousness

(N .Z.P .A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 21. The United States State Department has questioned Hanoi’s seriousness about opening diplomatic peace contacts, and urged the North Vietnamese to “knuckle down” to the business of finding a suitable site for preliminary negotiations. State Department officials said that if North Vietnam were serious about picking a mutually agreeable location it would conduct exchanges through diplomatic channels and not engage in “public polemics.” Saying that Hanoi had given no formal direct answer to United States proposals of 15 possible sites, the department said yesterday it was concerned about the delay in an official response to President Johnson's “first-

step” offer on March 31 to get discussions underway. Hanoi seemed to be “frozen” on Warsaw or the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, the department said. State Department officials reiterated the United States objection to Warsaw, saying they felt Poland was not a neutral country because of its open support of North Vietnam militarily. Officials refused to speculate on Paris as a possible site, and suggested a third party might be necessary to reach agreement on a location. The Defence Secretary, Mr Clifford, returning after a meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation defence ministers at the Hague, told reporters the jockeying over selection of a site was similar to that which preceded the start of Korean war peace talks 15 years ago.

Mr Clifford predicted that Hanoi ultimately would agree on a location, and that the talks would take place. Meanwhile, the State Department denied there were differences between the Secretary of State, Mr Rusk and the White House over selection of a site. Unofficially, a spokesman for the department said that Paris appears to be “a place more likely to be accepted than any other place,” because it comes closest to meeting the criteria set down by both Washington and Hanoi for a suitable site. Neither side has proposed Paris, but the United Nations Secretary-General, U. Thant, has mentioned it as a possibility and French Foreign Minister, Mr Couve de Murville, has said his Government would welcome it as the site. In London, the “Sunday

Times" said Paris might best suit both Washington and Hanoi. It said in an editorial that if the talks were to succeed each side had to have efficient and secret communications between home government and negotiators. As the talks might last for months it was important that all delegations feel free and secure. The newspaper said: “It would be unreasonable therefore to expect the Americans to go to a Communist capita! or to one in which they have no fully operative embassy—just as it is unreasonable to expect the North Vietnamese to go to Geneva, which they associate with diplomatic defeat. “In spite of American suspicions of General de Gaulle's possible role, Paris might offer most advantages to both sides."