VIETNAM PEACE TALKS NEW AMERICAN NEGOTIATOR BURDENED WITH OLD BRIEF

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32379, 19 August 1970, Page 12

VIETNAM PEACE TALKS NEW AMERICAN NEGOTIATOR BURDENED WITH OLD BRIEF

from ths "Economist" by arrangement)

President Nixon has sent a flexible American to the Paris peace talks. Last week David Bruce took his seat at the head of the American delegation. But neither his practised charm nor his independent turn of mind augurs a new advance in those long and painful negotiations.

Mr Bruce made diplomatic ears twitch when he spoke of the talks as a “conference” instead of a "meeting," abandoning the official understatement of the last 18 months. And the belief that he is a bit of a dove may help to convince some of Mr Nixon’s critics at home that the President is still ready to try sweet reason to end the war. But Mr Bruce seems to be burdened with the same brief as his predecessors. Before he went to Paris he ironed out bis policy line in Saigon with President Thieu and Mr Bunker, the American Ambassador. They are both men who know how to hold their ground. And Mr Nixon made it plain in his Los Angeles press conference last week that be is not proposing to give anything more away than he promised the Communists in May last year. This makes it hard to see how Mr Bruce can have anything new to offer but smiles. Even President Thieu’s hints about a cease-fire last week had been standing on the shelf for nine months. • Rejected Terms There is a sound public relations reason for choosing a man like Mr Bruce for the job of digging in his heels. He looks the sort who will want to come to terms. But the only terms he will be allowed to suggest have already been rejected by the Communists many times over. They are terms that would be acceptable to the other side only if the South Vietnamese and the Americans were the acknowledged victors in the fighting. They are the terms that a superior power, aot without magnanimity, might offer an enemy near the brink of defeat But, despite all the allied gains since 1968, the Communists do not yet find themselves at the edge of that precipice. It would be unreasonable as well as unjust to blame only the Americans for being intransigent Mr Nixon is sticking to the eight-point plan he announced on May 14 last year. The National Liberation Front is sticking to the 10point plan it published six days before that If either side got its plan accepted, it would have gained far more than it has won in the course of the fighting. But there is no chance of that happening —unless public opinion forces Mr Nixon to make unilateral political concessions more dangerous and less reasoned than the unilateral military concession he is making as : e pulls troops out of Vietnam. Three Main Issues The argument in Paris centres on three main issues: the organisation of elections; the withdrawal of “foreign troops"; and the ultimate relation between North and South Vietnam. Both sides agree in principle that the

people of South Vietnam should be allowed to decide their political future through the ballot-box, although the Communists are almost certainly not confident enough of their voting power—they would be unlikely to get more than 15 or 20 per cent in an honest election—to put this into practice. The American plan would allow the National Liberation Front to field candidates and to take part in a joint electoral commission that would work with a team of international observers. After the polling a government would be formed that reflected the vote. Such a government could be a coalition including the N.L.F. if that group in fact did well enough. The Communists attack this scheme as a ruse designed to keep President Thieu in office. They are not eager to test their popularity, or to expose their men in the course of campaigning. And they naturally suspect that President Thieu would play dirty if he were in office on the eve of the election. The N.L.F. insists on a provisional coalition government which would organise the election. It would probably back a “third force” politician like General Minh to head such a coalition. Certainly Saigon’s present leaders could hope for no more than a very diminutive place in it President Thieu and Marshal Ky would definitely be excluded, although Madame Binh has dropped a hint that some lesser men might be tolerated. Personal Team

The idea of an imposed coalition has attracted many of those outside Vietnam who have been wearied by the blood-letting. But there are very good reasons why it seems unworkable to those who wish to see a non-Com-munist government survive in Saig a. President Thieu has managed to piece together a sturdier political apparatus than has been seen in South Vietnam in many years. But its weakness is that it is a very personal administration. Without President Thieu and the web of personal relationships he has woven around himself, whole sections of the government might simply fall apart—leaving the Communists as the dominant force in the pre-election government, able to stage a sham election or to dispense with it altogether. And, anyway, it is inconceivable that the majority of the members of the present Saigon government, or the majority of the N.L.F., could stomach the idea of sitting side by side in a provisional junta. The question of foreign

troops is even less negotiable. To begin with, the Americans and the North Vietnamese define “foreign” differently. For the Communists Vietnam is one country and Hanoi's regiments in South Vietnam are fighting a civil war. They are still calling for the unconditional withdrawal of American forces and those of “the other foreign countries of the American camp.” Mr Nixon, in contrast, talks about the withdrawal of “all non-South Vietnamese troops”—* formula that the Communist will not digest unless they are obliged to. But the North Vietnamese have less reason than ever to think about Mr Nixon’s idea of balanced reductions now It is clear that the Americans are on the way out and that the President would be hard pressed to slow the pace. In Step With Hanoi Then there is the Communist hope for the reunification of the two halves of Vietnam. This is one of the things the war has always been about, and another reason why talk of coalition rings hollow. The Communists who would serve in a coalition government in Saigon would not just be southern members of a southern party, the N.L.F. They would continue to march in step with Hanoi, backed by North Vietnamese regulars as ; well as the northern rein- ' forcements who hold the Viet Cong together. The Paris conference is yet another graveyard of diplomacy. It is not a place where there ean be free dealing between equals. It is the war lon a different front. A deal ' can be arranged only when > one side is ready to concede ! defeat on the battlefield, or s when the Americans decide t to wash their hands of Viet i nam no matter what follows. ■ As long as the Americans go i on fighting, there is a chance > that their gains on the battlei field and in the pacification > programme could add up to a i position that would make a t settlement possible on Mr i Nixon’s terms. It would be a . settlement short of devactat--1 ing military victory, a settle- ■ ment that would try to bring I the losers back into the fold, s That kind of settlement is t not possible yet The Com- - munists have steeled them- : selves for a long war, and are • counting on the belief that i their nerve will be the last to i break. Many people have , come to feel, in a very human > way, and without considering i the political consequences, that the only important thing i is to stop the war. That kind i of thinking always plays into i the bands of those who are best at sitting on their i scruples.