Word: norths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Nixon addressed the nation. In a restrained and powerful address, he repeated his willingness to settle the war. But the North Vietnamese "arrogantly refuse to negotiate anything but an imposition." The only way to stop the killing, therefore, was "to keep the weapons of war out of the hands of the international outlaws of North Viet Nam." He recited the military actions he was taking; he stated our negotiating position, the most forthcoming we had put forward: a standstill ceasefire, release of prisoners and total American withdrawal within four months...
...time Nixon and I returned from the May 1972 summit in Moscow, Hanoi's spring offensive had run out of steam. With our bombing and mining making themselves felt, the North Vietnamese army was stalled. Our twin summits, in Peking and Moscow, had undoubtedly engendered a sense of isolation in the North. And they had greatly strengthened Nixon's domestic position, thus removing Hanoi's key weapon of leverage on us. In June we received the first inconclusive hints that Hanoi might be engaged in cease-fire planning. By the middle of September, the evidence was unmistakable...
...Sunday morning, Oct. 8. The critical meeting was held in a house in suburban Gif-sur-Yvette, once owned by the French artist Fernand Léger and still adorned with his Cubist paintings and tapestries. Around noon, after Kissinger had laid out the essentially unchanged U.S. position, the North Vietnamese requested a break until four that afternoon...
...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...
This pale shadow of their former demands for a coalition government was not much to show for a decade of heroic exertion and horrendous suffering by the North Vietnamese. After four years of implacable insistence that we dismantle the political structure of our ally and replace it with a coalition government, Hanoi had now essentially given up its political demands...