CONTACTS WITH HANOI Nixon confident about outcome

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33063, 2 November 1972, Page 15

CONTACTS WITH HANOI Nixon confident about outcome

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, November 1. The Nixon Administration, after more secret contacts with Hanoi in the last few days, is confident today that North Vietnam will meet Washington’s request to reopen negotiations on a Vietnam peace accord. Officials believe that since Hanoi has won points by attacking the United States for prolonging the fighting by ignoring yesterday’s deadline for signing the cease-fire agreement, it will not now find it hard to agree to a last negotiating round.

The excitement generated by the disclosure, last week, of the ninepoint cease-fire plan has gradually ebbed in Washington as fierce fighting and heavy bombing has continued in Vietnam, and President Thieu has declared the proposed accord a sell-out.

The White House spokesman, Mr Ronald Ziegler, has disclosed that there have been secret Hanoi-Washington contacts in the last few days, but he will not say if Hanoi

has agreed to a new date for a final round of talks.

| President Nixon’s principal 'adviser. Dr Henry Kissinger, 'has said that only six or seven points remain to be clarified before the United States signs. Last week he said: "Peace is at hand.” Mr Nixon, while express- ■ ing confidence that there will !be a cease-fire, gave a wamjing last night that he would ■ not be stampeded into the i wrong kind of settlement; and ■ today, Mr Ziegler cautioned journalists against expecting a signed agreement before the Presidential election on November 7.

Dr Kissinger’s final negotiating meeting with the Communists could be expected to last a few days, he said, and

it would be followed by another journey to Saigon by Dr Kissinger to explain the details to Mr Thieu.

Thieu’s attacks

Political observers in Washington regard Mr Thieu’s bitter attacks on the draft agreement as part of his efforts to obtain the best possible deal from the issues still to be settled.

His main anxiety is the American concession that leaves 145,000 North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam after the cease-fire. A Washington press report says that the withdrawal of part of this force—perhaps of between 20,000 and 50,000 men, as an unofficial gesture of good will—is understood to be among the issues still to be resolved.

Mr Ziegler implied today that the main obstacle left involves the exact status of the council of national reconciliation and concord that will oversee the cease-fire and make arrangements for free elections in South Vietnam.

Dr Kissinger emphasised last week that the Communists were calling the proposed council a coalition—a word repugnant to both Washington and Saigon—when, in the American view, it is to be “an administrative structure.”

The importance of this point lies in the fact that the negotiating break-through came only when Hanoi dropped its insistence on a coalition government and the removal of Mr Thieu. Mr Nixon and Dr Kissinger conferred again yesterday on Washington’s differences with both Hanoi and the adamant Saigon regime. But, in spite of the delay in arranging a final meeting, Washington officials remain confident that it will be held soon, and that the Communists will stand by what they said was their decision to end the war.