Talks Not For Peace At Any Price

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31677, 13 May 1968, Page 13

Talks Not For Peace At Any Price

(K.Z. Press Association— Copyright > PARIS, May 12. The United States embarks on Monday on a crucial course —prepared for a Vietnam peace at a price, but not for peace at any price, according to a United Press International correspondent, K. C. Thaler.

The confrontation with North Vietnam across the conference table, says Thaler, will be "long, tough, and perilous.” It may see a revival of some of the worst coldwar tactics of the post-war years, he says. “Hanoi set the tone for the conference in a tough arrival statement by the Communist negotiating team. Peace, they said, can come only on their terms. It was not encouraging.” says Thaler. The United States, he says, came to Paris in search of what it termed “an honourable settlement” of the conflict in Vietnam. Hanoi, to all appearances, hoped to win at the conference table what it had failed to win on the battlefields—total victory. But both sides are set to negotiate from strength. The initial stage of the

Paris talks, says Thaler, will of positions and eagerness to end the war.

Hanoi, setting its terms in advance of the talks, has served notice it does not intend to compromise. The Communists demand that the Americans halt the bombing of North Vietnam—unconditionally—and stop other acts of war against it. But, Thaler says, they are unwilling so far to make a reciprocal gesture of deescalation of infiltration of the South. They say only if these demands are accepted by the United States, can formal peace negotiations begin. The negotiations, according to Hanoi, must be based on its four-point outline. This centres on American withdrawal from Vietnam and a pledge that the two Vietnams must refrain from entering into foreign military alliances be aimed at a mutual testing

pending re-unification of the country. South Vietnam's affairs, in Hanoi’s view, must also be settled by the National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong's political arm, and reunification determined by the Vietnamese people of both parts. "In other words, Americans out. Communists in,” says Thaler.

Hanoi, he says, has left the door open for compromise—mainly on the time-table for these processes—and the possible formation of a coalition regime in Saigon with the Viet Cong. Unlike Hanoi’s chief negotiator, Xuan Thuy, the Presidential envoy, Mr Averell Harriman, studiously avoided setting out the United States’s peace terms on his arrival. “But the over-all American peace outline can be sinned up broadly in the words of the United States Secretary of State, Dean Rusk: an end to aggression and subversion, freedom for South Vietnam to choose its own destiny without foreign interference and in conformity with democratic principles, the eventual withdrawal of foreign military forces (including American) and effective guarantees for the freedom of the South Vietnamese people,” says Thaler. On superficial examination, he says, there seems to be agreement in principle between the two sides, at least on some important issues. Both sides appear to agree on the need for a settlement based on the Geneva accords of 1954. Both seem to accept the idea of ultimate neutrality for Vietnam, and eventual withdrawal of foreign troops. But each side attaches a different meaning to these l principles.