Hanoi’s Negotiators Will Have The First Word

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

Hanoi’s Negotiators Will Have The First Word

/ (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, May 12. United States and North Vietnamese officials today completed preparations for tomorrow’s first across-the-table encounter between their chief negotiators, Mr Averell Harriman and Mr Xuan Thuy, in the longawaited preliminary Vietnam peace talks. Delegates from the two countries have during the last two days thrashed out an agreement on the technical procedures to be followed during the formal talks which are being held in the International Conference Centre in the heart of Paris and which most observers expect to last several months. Mr Harriman will lead a delegation of 11 advisers and technical assistants, including interpreters and secretaries, and Mr Thuy, a team of 14.

The world’s television cameramen and press photographers photographers will be given 10 minutes in which to record the historic meeting at 10.30 a.m. tomorrow before the 76-year-old American Ambassador and the 55-year-old North Vietnamese poet - diplomat get down to business. It has been agreed that the conference will be conducted in two languages, English and Vietnamese, with French as the working language. This means that each side will use its own language in conducting the day-to-day business of the conference, but French will be used for any conference documents and statements. because it can be

readily translated and understood by both sides. Informed sources say Mr Harriman is willing to allow Mr Thuy to have the first word and make his opening policy statement. The American negotiator will then set out the United States’ case:

Mr Harriman has brought from Washington a dossier of papers to deal with any charge or point made by Mr Thuy. In his arrival statement last Thursday, Mr Thuy made it clear that Hanoi would continue to insist that the first item On the agenda must be his Government's demand that the United States halt all bombing and other acts of war against the North. But Mr Harriman is expected to reiterate that before the United States considers this it must have some sign from Hanoi that it is willing to scale-down its part in the land war. The Americans are known

to be concerned that a heavy infiltration of men and supplies has been taking place from the North into South Vietnam since President Johnson, on March 31, limited the bombing to only 22 per cent of North Vietnamese territory, up to the twentieth Parallel. The press spokesmen of the two delegations, Mr William Jorden, for the United States, and Mr Nguyen Thanh Le, for North Vietnam, are expected to discuss today how much information they should disclose after each conference session to the 500-odd journalists gathered in Paris from all over the world.

“Freeze” Suggested

The “New York Times" today suggests that the negotiators should reach early agreement to talk about “a freeze of external forces” in South Vietnam after the United States stops bombing North Vietnam. “The United States intends to limit its forces, anyway, and would not be conceding much in accepting an agreed '■eiling,” the newspaper argues in an editorial. “North Vietnam would have to admit the presence of its forces in the South—something it has refused to do heretofore.”

The newspaper's editorial suggests that such an agreement would help to lift the negotiators above rigid and

uncompromising positions and would be “one way to escape from this morass." It adds: “One way to escape this morass would be procedural agreement to work out a freeze of external forces as the first order of business. “The admission, and a commitment to negotiate a ceasefire and disengagement, constitute a quid pro quo that could well justify the suspension of bombing in the North Vietnamese panhandle.”