Word: dais
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...Indo-China war's third year, the French installed Bao Dai, playboy descendant of old Annamite kings, as Viet Nam's chief of state. But Bao Dai usually complied with French demands, and therefore got almost no public support, while Moscow Servant Ho Chi Minh was often admired simply because he was anti-French. Not until last month did Viet Nam get a genuinely nationalist Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem - probably too late to make up for France's long refusal to prepare the Vietnamese for self-government and self-defense, probably too late to save...
...Minh. stoutly averring that he would no more cooperate with Communists than with the French. (A few months later, the Communists murdered one of Diem's five brothers, reportedly by burying him alive.) In August 1949 Diem also refused to join the Vietnamese government of Bao Dai, insisting upon complete independence for Viet Nam and a free hand for himself. "He must have his own way always," said one of his associates. And a second Vietnamese added: "He is a narrow...
...abusive, arrogant, mocking. Clearly intending to bring down the La-niel government, he complained of Bi-dault's "refusal or evasion of negotiations" with the Viet Minh itself, taunted him with the cost to France in men and money of a "colonial war." He charged that the Bao Dai government had no popular support. He claimed that the Communists already controlled three-quarters of Viet Nam, half of Laos, a smaller but increasing part of Cambodia. As for Dienbienphu, "Who can deny that the defense of Dienbienphu was in the main carried out not by the French...
Disorganized, confused, divided, Western delegations took to blaming their allies. The U.S. delegates bitterly complained that Churchill had let the West down, blamed the weakness of the French government for the crisis, complained about feckless, fun-loving Bao Dai. "It's hard to say that the Vietnamese are struggling for their independence when their leader spends most of his time at Cannes with a bunch of blondes," grumbled...
...French had long been unwilling to grant their Vietnamese subjects even this much independence; they had delayed the agreement right up to the Geneva Conference, when it finally became necessary to remove the stigma of "colonial war" from the Indo-China campaign. Then Vietnamese Chief of State Bao Dai, who has lifted do-nothingism into a career, had balked for three days on the grounds that the package would probably be undone at Geneva by the French. Despite last week's agreement in principle, both Frenchmen and Vietnamese are still haggling over the legal and financial specifics of independence...