Word: mends
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Closing Hours. Amidst all the relief felt for the ending of the Indo-China war and the acclaim for his dazzling display of diplomatic virtuosity, Pierre Mendès-France, the realist, had no illusions and said so. Geneva had been a disaster for France, forced on him by past mistakes. On paper, Mendès-France had got more last-minute concessions than any one had expected, but the agreements were full of potential booby traps. Biggest one of all: the agreements depended on Communist promises...
...villa by Lac Leman, three men hunched over a great man of Indo-China late one night last week. One was the Communist Viet Minh's Pham Van Dong; another was France's Premier Pierre Mendès-France; the third was Albert Sarraut, an oldtime French empire builder who had been governor of Indo-China in lordlier days when there were no such irritants as the Viet Minh. Each had a red pencil in his hand. Beneath their hands the map was slashed with red lines, until Viet Nam began to look like a body crisscrossed with...
...midnight the meeting broke up. "Agreement is near," yawned a sleepy French official. Mendès had only 24 hours left to make good on his pledge to get peace or resign...
...Minus-One. Mendès had begun that day, the next to last before his deadline, faced with new demands 1) from China's Chou En-lai for a slice of northern Laos to be attached to China's province of Yunnan, and 2) from Pham Van Dong for more than a third of Laos to be handed over to the "free" Pathet Laos movement. Heavy black circles under his eyes, Mendès had picked up his faithful backer Anthony Eden, rushed off to see Chou Enlai...
...argument that followed, said a Frenchman, was "Homeric." After two hours Mendès got Chou to abandon his grab for Laotian territory, and to withdraw most of his support for the Pathet Laos claims. In exchange, Mendès accepted Communist Poland as a member of the three-nation supervisory commission agreed that major decisions should be by unanimous vote, thus yielding the Communists a veto...