Nixon Plan Seeks 12-Month Withdrawal Period

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31989, 16 May 1969, Page 11

Nixon Plan Seeks 12-Month Withdrawal Period

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, May 15. President Nixon summoned his Cabinet and the National Security Council into joint session today to review his eight-point Vietnam peace plan, including supervised withdrawal of foreign troops from South Vietnam over a 12-month period.

Called to the meeting was Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, chief United States negotiator at the Paris peace talks, who was due to fly back to the French capital tonight to submit the new United States formula to the Communists.

The President outlined his initiative to end the Vietnam war in a televised address last night, terming it “a generous and reasonable peace offer.” The eight-point plan was offered, he said not on a take-it-or-leave-it basis but to get the Paris negotiations off dead centre. The New York Times News Service said the President rejected the idea of a one-sided pull-out of American troops as demanded by Hanoi and the Viet Cong. In its 10-point peace proposal offered last week, the Viet Cong called for the unconditional withdrawal of American forces. At the same time, however, President Nixon held out the promise of an early, partial reduction in allied forces because of what he described as Saigon’s increasing military strength. He emphasised that this might be accomplished quite apart from what occurs in the negotiations in Paris.

“The time is approaching,” he declared, “when South Vietnamese forces will be able to take over some of the fighting fronts now being manned by Americans.”

White House sources said that such withdrawals, when they occurred, would very definitely involve combat troops

and not be confined to supply forces behind the lines. The President offered Hanoi a face-saving way of removing its own troops, by dropping the Johnson Administration’s insistence that Hanoi admit it had regular troops fighting in South Vietnam. “If North Vietnam wants to insist that it has no forces in South Vietnam, we will no

longer debate the point—provided that forces cease to be there, and that we have reliable assurances that they will not return," he declared. This was one of several places in the speech where the President offered a flexible negotiating technique, or ambiguous language, that could be developed in future secret bargaining. On the subject of with-

drawals, President Nixon insisted on one point If North Vietnam agreed to withdraw its forces on the basis of a phased timetable, he said, it would be required to withdraw them not only from South Vietnam but from Cambodia and Laos as well. The Cambodian border is only 35 miles from Saigon, the Laotian border only 25 miles from Hue, and the allies would not accept withdrawals that left those two major South Vietnamese centres exposed to “renewed war.” The speech sounded to some observers as if it had been written in two parts and by two hands. Observers found the flexibility of Nixon’s specific proposals in decided contrast to his rather stern rhetoric. He asserted that United States credibility would be badly damaged if Saigon were abandoned, and added: “If Hanoi were to succeed in taking over South Vietnam by force—even after th; power of the United States had been engaged—it would greatly strengthen those leaders who scorn negotiation, who advocate aggression, who minimise the risks of confrontation. It would bring peace now, but it would enormously increase the danger of a bigger war later.

“If we are to move successfully from an era of confrontation to an era of negotiation, then we have to demonstrate—at the point at which confrontation is being tested—that confrontation with the United States is costly and unrewarding.” At another point, the President appeared to be warning the enemy that these proposals represented genuine concessions, a conciliatory posture that could be ignored or repudiated only at some risk-

“I must make it clear, in all

candour, that if the needless suffering continues, this will affect other decisions Nobody has anything to gain by delay,” President Nixon saidPressed for an explanation of this sentence, White House sources said simply that it ought to be “self-explana-tory.”