Word: agreement
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa, which had adopted the 20% formula a week earlier. Then, with equally surprising magnanimity, the bishop's multiracial coalition government reversed an earlier stand and announced its acceptance of internationally supervised elections. At week's end only a few outstanding questions remained before agreement could be reached on all the provisions of a future constitution...
...suggested that the U.S. and North Viet Nam sign an agreement settling the military questions between them-withdrawal, prisoners, ceasefire. The political problem-"that is the most thorny, the most difficult problem"-would not be allowed to prolong our negotiations. Le Duc Tho now dispensed with the entire concept of a coalition government. It was now only an "Administration of National Concord," to be set up within three months by the two South Vietnamese parties and charged with implementing the signed agreements and "organizing" elections...
Nixon was quite positive that an agreement was unnecessary for the election; its benefit would be too marginal to warrant any risks. Haldeman thought that an agreement was a potential liability; he was certain that Democratic Candidate George McGovern's support had been reduced to fanatics who would not vote for Nixon even if he arranged the Second Coming. On the other hand, an agreement might disquiet conservative supporters. The Viet Nam negotiations, in short, were not used to affect the election; the election was used to accelerate the negotiations...
...cable arrived from Ambassador Bunker with a warning that whatever the agreement, we might be sailing into stormy seas in Saigon...
That was putting it mildly. "Thieu objected not to specific terms but to the fact of an agreement," Kissinger writes. He did not come right out and say so. "Instead, he fought in the Vietnamese manner: indirectly, elliptically, by methods designed to exhaust rather than to clarify, constantly needling but never addressing the real issue." On the third day of meetings, the Vietnamese presented Kissinger with 23 changes, some major, in the draft peace treaty; later that figure would triple, to 69. Finally the talks broke down completely as Thieu, between tears of rage, accused the Americans of having "connived...