The Press SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1974. A year after the ”cease-fire"

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33443, 26 January 1974, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1974. A year after the ”cease-fire"

South Vietnam, receiving little active support from any allies, has had. on average, about 250 of its people killed each week for the last year by a subversive movement which continues to enjoy extensive support In weapons and manpower from North Vietnam. A cease-fire is nominally in force between the antagonists; it is repeatedly disregarded and South Vietnam has been forced on to the defensive through much of its territory. Such a state of affairs would normally stir an angry’ response from th? international community and in the United Nations, not to mention an outcry from groups who are opposed to violence, and especially to aggression, as a means of settling political disputes.

A year after the cease-fire agreement was signed in Paris, the casualties in South Vietnam, and the mounting scale of the fighting there, pass with less notice in New Zealand than deaths from traffic accidents. Since American troops withdrew, the Western world has attempted to pretend that the war in Vietnam has ended. Even the withdrawal of the Canadians from the international force supervising the cease-fire has caused little concern, even though Canada, the most conscientious member of the force, found it impossible to investigate breaches. International observation of the belligerents’ behaviour—let alone supervision—appears to have stopped. The possibility of progress towards a political settlement, on which the Paris agreement set much store, is seldom mentioned. President Thieu’s Government is alone, facing a North Vietnamese army inside South Vietnam and just over the borders with Laos and Cambodia. This army is said to have been enlarged since the cease-fire and in defiance of the agreement. South Vietnam’s success in containing its opponents, even at a great cost in South Vietnamese casualties, may be taken as a measure of the support for the Saigon leadership in spite of the efforts of its enemies and detractors—many of them in the Western world—to denigrate the South’s Government.

Twice this month President Thieu has announced that the Communist forces were about to launch an all-out attack. He “cried wolf’’ too often last year to be taken seriously; but the people of South Vietnam have not forgotten that their Lunar New Year this week-end is also the anniversary of the most savage Communist assault of the long war—an assault that led to the massacre of thousands of civilians in the city of Hue early in 1968. Some recent attacks have been close to Hue, which is said to be again within the range of Communist artillery; most attacks, however, have been on Government strong-points in the Central Highlands, where the cease-fire left a string of strong border posts deep inside areas held by the Communists. The reduction of these posts appears to be a Communist priority, for they threaten the security of the North Vietnamese supply routes to insurgents in Cambodia and Laos as well as those in South Vietnam. So far, the South Vietnamese have been able to win the larger battles, although the North Vietnamese are showing increasing sophistication in their handling of tanks. Thousands of smaller attacks, of the classic guerrilla kind, have been steadily eroding South Vietnamese forces. The big Communist attack might not come in the next few weeks; yet it cannot be far away judging by the size of the force being assembled under Hanoi's direction. And there have been sufficient violations of the cease-fire by both sides for either to claim provocation for a larger assault. Perhaps the fate of South Vietnam—and even all of Indo-China—does not matter very much to the rest of the world. It still matters as much to the South Vietnamese as it did in the years when other countries, including New Zealand, were prepared to assist them. For a year the}’ have shown that they are prepared to defend themselves; there should no longer be any doubt that the “ aggressor of Indo-China is North Vietnam, which has considerable forces occupying parts of the other three countries. No-one would want to see other foreign troops intrude again to sustain a cease-fire which was never much more than a device for United States withdrawal. Nevertheless, the voice of moral Indignation which New Zealand and many other Western States have been ready enough to use against political violence elsewhere should not be silent here. It is little enough to offer a people fighting for survival.