The Men Face To Face

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31678, 14 May 1968, Page 17

The Men Face To Face

(N.Z. Pre** A**n—Copvrijhtl

PARIS, May 13.

The two leading negotiators at the Vietnam peace conference in Paris, Mr Averell Harriman and Mr Xuan Thuy, are as different as the worlds they represent.

Mr Harriman, tell, lean and elegant is a product of enormous American wealth and equipped with a top-drawer education, trained in the social graces, an expert bridge player and, in his youth, an accomplished sportsman. His world has been Yale and Hobe Sound, the drawing rooms of New York and Washington, the polo field of Long Island, and the embassies and high government offices of half a dozen world capitals. The son of a railroad tycoon who controlled the Union Pacific, Mr Harriman has used the benefits of persona) affluence for public service. During the Second World War he was United States Ambassador to Moscow and, later, to London: and he was with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at all but one of the major war-time conferences.

During President Truman’s Administration he served as Secretary of Commerce and, during the 19505, before he became Governor of his native New York State, he made two unsuccessful attempts to win the Democratic Presidential nomination. Mr Harriman was not especially happy as Governor, his aides say his real interest lies in international affairs. In 1958, another multi-million-aire Republican, Mr Nelson Rockefeller, defeated him for the governorship. In 1961-62 Mr Harriman headed the United State delegation to the Geneva Conference on Laos, and helped

achieve the nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union and Britain in 1963.

Now aged 76, Mr Harriman is hard Of hearing but extremely vigorous, and rated one of the coolest negotiators in the diplomatic world. Diplomatic finesse is about the only thing Mr Harriman and his Vietnamese counterpart have in common. Physically, the diminutive, moon-faced Mr Xuan Thuy is dwarfed by Mr Harriman’s 6ft frame.

In his 55 years, Mr Thuy has been a revolutionist, a prisoner of the French, a journalist and a handyman for President Ho Chi Minh. Born on the outskirts of Hanoi, Mr Thuy became an activist almost in his childhood, agitating first against French colonial rule in IndoChina.

At the age of 18 he was packed off by the French to a grim prison island in the South China Sea, and he later served two more prison terms, including a six-year sentence.

In between he wrote for the Vietnamese nationalists and then edited the organ of the Viet Minh movement, which fought the French. All the while he was rising in the North Vietnamese Communist Party, and during the Geneva Conference on Laos he was second-in-command of the delegation which faced the American representatives, led by Mr Harriman. Thus, these two men, from different cultures and different ends of the world, came to Paris already having each other’s measure. After Geneva, Mr Thuy, whs rewarded with Hanoi's foreign ministry, but was replaced In 1965. The official explanation was “reasons of health.”

Unlike Mr Harriman, he is neither striking nor colourful, but he has travelled in European capitals more than almost any other North Vietnamese.

By those, like Mr Harriman, who know him, he is considered a formidable foe.