Word: agreement
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ploy to raise hopes for peace during the last stages of the presidential campaign. This misses the mark completely. Once Hanoi had gone public we had no choice except to state our case. I had two objectives. One was to reassure Hanoi that we would stand by the basic agreement, while leaving open the possibility of raising Saigon's suggested changes. The second was to convey to Saigon that we were determined to proceed on our course...
...cited a preliminary figure of about 1,300 persons killed after twelve days of bombing; many must have been military personnel, for antiaircraft batteries were a primary objective. I received incredibly bitter letters from erstwhile friends, from angry citizens. (None of them wrote me in January when the agreement was reached.) It seemed to be taken for granted that North Viet Nam was blameless and that we were embarked on a course of exterminating civilians...
...through it would be negotiated), there remained primarily the theological issue of how to sign the documents so that Saigon did not have to acknowledge the Communist-front Provisional Revolutionary Government. We devised a formula according to which neither Saigon nor the P.R.G. was mentioned in the document; the agreement to end the war in Viet Nam has the distinction of being the only document with which I am familiar in diplomatic history that does mention the main parties. The negotiations had begun in 1968 with a haggle over the shape of the table; they ended in 1973 with...
Haig would leave on Jan. 14 for Saigon with an ultimatum that we would sign the document, if necessary, without Thieu. I would return to Paris on Jan. 23 to complete the agreement...
...still did not have the agreement of that doughty little man in Saigon, President Thieu. Nixon was determined to prevail. "Brutality is nothing," he said to me. "You have never seen it if this son-of-a-bitch doesn't go along, believe me." Haig delivered a scorching letter from Nixon to Thieu on Jan. 16. Its crucial paragraph read: "I have irrevocably decided to initial the Agreement on Jan. 27, 1973, in Paris. I will do so, if necessary, alone. In that case I shall have to explain publicly that your Government obstructs peace. The result will...