Fruitless search for peace in Vietnam

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32861, 9 March 1972, Page 17

Fruitless search for peace in Vietnam

(By

ARNOLD ABRAMS)

SAIGON. Hanoi’s rejection of Washington’s latest peace proposals illustrates vividly what Communist spokesmen have termed the “night-and-day” differences in the bargaining positions of North Vietnam and the United States-backed Government of South Vietnam.

Senior American officials righeously declare that some of the peace terms, dramatically disclosed late in January by President Nixon, went well beyond anything previously offered by Washington. Hanoi’s veto, they contend, merely spotlights their enemy’s intransigence at the negotiating table. To be sure, communist negotiators hav.e been something less than malleable; but there are substantive reasons for the tough stand they have taken, and the importance of the Northerners’ logic is increasing daily. The most immediate of these reasons come from current conditions in the IndoChina struggle. With the United States military machine largely dismantled, and battle tides turning back in th.e communists’ favour, there seems little need for the North Vietnamese to accept what they view as a booby-trapped package of American settlement proposals. Wary negotiators Even more significant than the present situation is the past history of this conflict. It includes several episodes —the major one being the: 1954 Geneva Agreement—in which North Vietnamese leaders felt they lost at the bargaining table what they had earned on the battlefield.

The communists are highly sensitive to prospects of the same thing happening again —particularly at this point, when they have made important military gains in Laos and Cambodia and are apparently preparing another offensive in South Vietnam.

Consequently, despite American concessions and what the White House at first termed “new language” in the communists’ public coun-ter-offer, the negotiating stalemate persists. The unbridged points of disagreement between Hanoi and Washington remain so basic that a peace settlement must be regarded as out of the question in the foreseeable future.

The major snags involve the timing and the terms of a complete United States withdrawal, as well as political changes that would give the North Vietnamese a fair chance of gaining governing power in the South.

President Nixon's terms included an offer to withdraw all American forces within six months of an over-all agreement or military settlement; a promise of supervised elections — including communist participation — within the same time-frame; and a decla-

ration that President Nguyen Van Thieu would step down from office one month before such elections. Bait not taken However enticing such bait might have appeared to Washington’s eyes, Hanoi clearly is not biting. The communists have countered with demands that President Nixon set a specific terminal date for unconditional withdrawal, and that President Thieu resign immediately. The North Vietnamese, moreover, have made no distinction between direct American war efforts and President Nixon’s Vietnamisation programme, which is furnishing Saigon with massive military and economic aid. That programme perpetuates the war, the Northerners said, and it too must stop.

Although President Thieu’s resignation offer was Saigon’s biggest concession to date, Hanoi saw it solely as sham. To the North Vietnamese, last October’s

national “election” in the South—in which President Thieu was the only candidate —proved the impossibility of a fair contest as long as Thieu and his political cronies retain control. It must be remembered that such control could not be loosened by Thieu’s gesture just one month before the vote.

If a rigged election is inevitable, the Communists feel, they should have a more substantial hand in the rigging. They have said that Thieu’s departure must be followed by the establishment of a temporary coalition government that would organise general elections, oversee selection of a constituent assembly, prepare a constitution and help to establish a permanent government. Top United States officials contend that the Communists’ military and poliitical demands, if met, would amount to an American capitulation, perhaps even open defeat. Basic demands “If the enemy wants peace,” President Nixon has said, “it will have to recognise the important difference between settlement and surrender.” Says Henry Kissinger, Mr Nixon’s de facto Secretary of State: “They are asking us to align ourselves with them, to overthrow the people that have been counting on us.” But are they? What is Hanoi asking Washington to surrender other than the selfstyled right to send forces into a country halfway around the world and wage war for a regime it created and helped to keep in office? Who is Hanoi asking Washington to overthrow other than a mufti-clad military strongman whose election made a mockery of the democratic principles for which thousands — Vietnamese, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, South Koreans and others—have died in Vietnam? Essentially, the Northerners are demanding that the United States, after waging war and interfering in their internal affairs for more than a decade, must overcome false pride, overturn a disastrous policy and unconditionally leave Vietnam. With decades of war behind them, with so much still at stake and with so much time on their side, the North Vietnamese are scarcely likely to settle for less. Would anyone? — Intrasia News Service.