Gorton Wants South In Paris Talks

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31830, 7 November 1968, Page 11

Gorton Wants South In Paris Talks

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, November 6. United States and North Vietnamese negotiators today will miss their first weekly meeting since the Paris preliminary peace talks began almost six months ago.

Today’s session was to have been the first to include delegations from the South Vietnamese Government and the South Vietnam National Liberation Front, political arm of the Viet Cong. But the Saigon Government—which up to now has had only an observer in Paris—is refusing to sit at the conference table unless the N.L.F. is represented as part of the Hanoi delegation, and not as a separate body.

Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the N.L.F. representative leader, said at a press conference yesterday: “I think the American side can represent the Saigon Government . . . We are ready to take part in a conference of three.”

The United States, in asking for the postponement of today’s meeting, said: “There can be no conference on the future of South Vietnam without the presence of the Government of South Vietnam.” The Australian Prime Minister (Mr Gorton) disclosed in the House of Representatives last night that he had advised South Vietnam to send a delegation to Paris. But the South Vietnam Government has so far given no response to Australia’s prompting. Best Interests Mr Gorton, in opening a debate on the halt to bombing ordered by President Johnson, said he had told the South Vietnam Government he understood its reservations about attending in Paris. “But we feel their best interests would be served by their representatives attending the talks at the earliest possible date.” he said. Mr Gorton said he had taken the initiative to get South Vietnam to the peace table after President Johnson announced the bombing halt. If there were to be any substantive result to emerge from the Paris meeting, the South Vietnam Government must be represented, he said. Neither the Australian Government nor the South Vietnam Government recognises the N.L.F. as a party to the Paris peace talks. The N.L.F.

should be represented in the North Vietnam delegation, according to this viewpoint. The bombing halt and N.L.F. participation, on the understanding that de-escala-tion and serious peace talks would follow, were concessions that held out hope of advance towards peace, said Mr Gorton. “In those circumstances, we welcome them with hope,” he said. It would be “positively harmful” for him, or anyone else, to canvass the course the talks might take or the problems that might arise. No-one could say how long the talks might go on—and it was possible there might be hard fighting while the negotiations continued. In The South North Vietnam's Army High Command admitted today that its troops have been fighting in South Vietnam, and predicted that the United States would suffer a “complete defeat,” the Associated Press reported.

The admission was contained in an official command communique, which said that Communist victories in North and South Vietnam forced President Johnson to order a halt to the bombardment of North Vietnam last Friday.

United States defeats in Vietnam, the communique said, resulted from the “militant solidarity between the North and the South.” Administration sources in Washington today acknowledged that President Johnson was aware—when he announced a halt in all bombing of North Vietnam—that Saigon would refuse to attend the expanded Paris talks, United Press International reported. The sources contended, however, that the President had no choice but to make the announcement when he

did. They firmly denied any suggestion that he was playing politics in an effort to help Mr Humphrey in the Presidential election.

South Vietnam’s President, Nguyen Van Thieu, fully agreed on October 16 to the formula the United States proposed for halting the bombing and expanding the Paris talks, these sources said—but suddenly reversed himself on October 30 after Hanoi accepted President Johnson’s proposal.

Stowaway Sparrow. The Queen Elizabeth completed its last voyage from New York yesterday with a stowaway aboard—a New York sparrow, the Associated Press has reported. It made its home in the midships bar, and took to drinking gin and tonic, passengers reported. It flew off once the French coastline was sighted.—Southampton, November 6.