Hope continues at Paris talks

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33092, 6 December 1972, Page 19

Hope continues at Paris talks

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, December 5. President Nixon’s special envoy, Dr Henry Kissinger, and the Hanoi envoy, Mr Le Due Tho, will continue their talks today in what are believed to be final negotiations which could end the Vietnam war before Christmas.

All sides to the Vietnam struggle now expeet the current round of talks to clinch a cease-fire agreement, bringing an end to American bombing of North Vietnam and enabling the first United States prisoners of war to return home before December 25.

Informed sources said that Dr Kissinger and Mr Tho would meet today but the site of the discussions was not disclosed.

The negotiators and their aides met for five hours yesterday, changing their meeting place after the morning session in an apparent effort to shake reporters off their trail.

American officials said that the talks looked quite promis. mg this time. “If all goes well, as many as 100 of the 400-odd United States prisoners of war may celebrate Christmas with their families,” one said.

Even the reluctant Saigon

Government was now reported ready to accept the forthcoming pact, however vague it may be on the burning issue of North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam.

A dispatch from the Hanoi correspondent of the French Communist newspaper, “Humanite,” today drew attention to a statement on political prisoners in South Vietnamese gaols issued by the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government (P.R.G.). The dispatch noted that the P.R.G. statement, issued on Sunday on the eve of the resumed United States-Hanoi talks, called for world opinion to help save “the best sons and daughters of die Vietnamese people.”.

Using a figure previously given out by Hanoi, it said that there were 300,000 such prisoners in Southern prisons — non-Communist reports speak merely of “thousands”— and said that lists were being drawn up of prisoners considered dangerous who were to be eliminated before a cease-fire.

It said that the prisoners were of all political tendencies and equated them with the third force — neither partisans of the Viet Cong nor of the Saigon Government — which is supposed to take part in a post-war "administrative structure” in the South.

Referring to the elimination of third-force prisoners, which it said had already begun, the dispatch said: “Americans and Saigonese are seeking to avoid the isolation of the Thieu regime by resorting to a sort of ‘final solution’ of the problem of the third force.

“It is very probable that this question and its corollaries are one of the numerous matters brought back into question by the Americans since last October’s accord.”