RECENT VIETNAMESE COMMUNIST STATEMENTS ON PEACE TERMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00826A001300010002-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 14, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 28, 1966
• Content Type: MEMO

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MEMORAMDt3M
t V
ese Communi
28 September 1966
tatements on Peace Terms
Pham Van Donq 24 September Speech
1, In our view, the remarks in Pham Van Dong's 24
September speech on Vietnam were intended primarily as
an unqualified, but somewhat unofficial, rejection of the
Goldberg proposals before the UN. We do not believe,
despite some new language by Dong, that the speech re-
veals any substantive change in Hanoi's position on start-
ing talks or a solution to the war. We kind it interest-
ing that Pham used the occasion- of a speech which- included.
several other subjects as the vehicle for his rejection.?
It appears that this may have been designed to avoid giv-
ing the impression of a full, government reply to Gold-
berg. The DRV rejects- any intrusion of the UN into the
Vietnam problem, and thus may not want to compromise its
position in any way by an official Foreign Ministry reply
to proposals presented before the UN. So far, no official
government statement- has been forthcoming,
2. We find Dong's remarks on Vietnam particularly
hard line, He not only flatly rejected the UN as an ar-
biter, but he cited Ho Chi Minh's tough statement of 17
July 1966 as an illustration of Vietnamese policy, stressed
the necessity- to "fight' and defeat the US in order to
gain a satisfactory settlement, and reiterated that the
DRV's four points and the Front's five points ar.,, the
'only" base for a peaceful solution in Vietnam. His speech,
in fact, was about the opposite of Rafaelli.'s highly in-
accurate interpretation of it in an AFP dispatch from
Hanoi,
3, Among the other hard-line aspects of Pham's
speech is his interesting phraseology regarding the fact
that the US "must recognize the NFLSV as their interlocutor
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to solve all questions in South Vietnam." This seems to
be a repetition in new words of the frequent DRV insistence
th the past that the US must "deal directly" with the Front
if it wants to negotiate, and that the Front's program
must form the basis for postwar political arrangements
in South Vietnam. It is not, therefore, a new substan-
tive aspect of Hanoi's public position on settling the
war.
4. We have, however, received a number of indications
that Hanoi's position on the Front is not as hard in prac-
tice as it is in public. There is enough evidence, we
believe, to indicate that if we ever reached the stage of
multilateral negotiations, Hanoi would be willing to back
away from its maximum position that the Front must be
the ogle representative of South Vietnam. We do not,
however, think Doug's hard-line reiteration of Hanoi's
maximum position on this point represents an actual harden-
ing of Hanoi's private view.
5. We think, instead, that Dong felt it necessary
to be tough on the point, mainly because of Goldberg's
suggestion that Front representation at peace talks would
not pose an "insurmountable" problem. Goldberg's posi-
tion, although it is not new in US proposals, may in
Hanoi's view have some attraction throughout the free
world and result in pressure on the Vietnamese Communists
to compromise, Thus, they would want to put forth once
again their maximum position in tough terms to discourage
any pressure for compromise. We think it unlikely that
the Vietnamese Communists will ever show any public give
in their position on the Front until a stage is reached in
which the issue has to be resolved. They will wish, un-
til the proper time to preserve the maximum negotiating
position.
6. DRV sensitivity on the question of any premature
concessions concerning the Front is probably the reason
behind a long commentary on the issue broadcast by Hanoi
on 27 September. There has been a rash of broadcasts on
peace terms in the last few days by both the DRV and the
NIMSV--following a period of relative quiet on the subject
by their spokesmen. These broadcasts are almost certainly
a countereffort to the Goldberg proposals.
-2-
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7.1-7
uu Tho Interview
7. In our judgment, the interview between nurchett
and National Front chairman Nguyen Huu Tho reveals no
substantive change in the Front's position on negotiation
or on a final settlement of the war. There seem to be,
first of all, no significant difference between the ver-
sion broadcast in Vietnamese by the Front and the Hanoi
version broadcast in English on 26 September. Although
Tho describes the Front as the only "legal" representa-
tive of the South Vietnamese and Hanoi terms the NFLSV
the only "genuine" representative, language specialists
tell us that the Vietnamese word used in the sentence
has both meanings.
8. This is not the first time that a Front spokes-
men has used a three-point formula for setting forth
the NFLSV terms for a "solution" to the war. Thus, we
do not believe this means the Front is abandoning the
five-point proposal it laid out in March of 1965, or
is *mending it. The Front representative in Peking,
for example, gave a aapanese newsman a three-point formu-
lation, using essentially the same terms eft Tho. in
November 1965 IFront
spokesmen, moreover, have often used other shorter
formulations in setting forth the Front's position and,
subsequent to Tho's interview, the Front has reiterated
its insistence that the US "anorove" the five-)oint oro-
posal of the NPLSV
Our feeling is that Tho probably put the Front
terme in a three-point formula for two mainreasons:
first, the exact terms of the old five-point proposal
were difficult to sort out from the rambling statement
in which it was published. Front leaders now have a
clear-cut statement to which they can refer, perhaps
in private conversations, but it is still nicely unofui
cial and does not specifically undercut the original
five-point proposal. Secondly, Tho nay have had in
mind giving an appearance of closer identity between
the Front's position and that of Hanoi as expressed in
the DRV's four points. Tho's three-point formula con?
tains all the essential ingredients of the DRV's four-
point position. While this is also true of the Front's
five-point statement, the language of the latter is
considerably less precise and gives the appearance of
a greater difference of view. We do not believe Tho's
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action reflects any real movement hotween Hanoi and the
Front, since we continue to believe the NFLSV is com-
pletely dominated by the North Vietnamese.
10. The only significant difference, when the ver-
biage is stripped away, between Tho's three points and
the Front's five points is that Tho does not make US
withdrawal a flat precondition for negotiations. The
NFLSV's five-point statement, by contrast, said that
"at present, all negotiations are useless" on the war
as long as the US 'imperialists do not withdraw all
troops, weapons," etc., from South Vietnam. The fact
of the matter is, however, that Tho's apparently inten-
tional effort to edge away from the Front's original
hard-line position and closer to Hanoi's stand is not
the first instance in which a Front representative or
propaganda broadcast has made such a move. Although
the hard-line five point position has ocassionally been
repeated, the Front has also on occasion, by omission,
implied that negotiations could be begun prior to im-
plementation of a US withdrawal. The interview quoted
above by the Front representative in Peking,. for ex-
ample, took this position in almost the same words as
Tho.
11. We believe the Vietnamese Communists will con-
tinue to surround their terms in a welter of seemingly
conflicting commentary which is calculated, in part, to
keep the West guessing. The Communists see this mainly
as an effort to preserve their flexibility. There is
no indication, however, that their basic terms have
changed. We believe these are best expressed in Hanoi's
four points and that Hanoi's position will be the decid-
ing one if the Vietnamese Communists decide to move
toward a political settlement.
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MEMORANDUM FOR.
Hewett/a H? Avore11 Berrie=
Attedeed sanamex to t3
26 Septolber entitled 'North e
Pointe* forwarded to yen earlier
Ca 28 $ept. 1966
(DATE)
FORM NO. 10 I REPLACES FORM 10.101
1 AUG 54 WHICH MAY BE USED.
(47)
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STAT
STAT
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This is actually an annex to the t6- September
memo on "North Vietnam's Four Points" sent to
for Harriman.
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