Word: saigon
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Amid the outpouring of genuine concern for the children, many Vietnamese adults who have good reason to flee their country seem to have been lost in the shuffle. The South Vietnamese government is not issuing passports except in "special cases"-such as the orphans. Saigon officials are worried that a mass exodus would touch off panic among those left behind. Clearly, however, people who were connected with the Thieu regime or with American organizations could be the victims of reprisal if the red flag goes up over Saigon. The U.S. recognizes that as many as 1 million people might have...
...could it happen?" a stunned South Vietnamese official wondered last week. "I just don't see how it could happen." His bafflement was shared by much of the world after the swift collapse of Saigon's fighting forces with almost no resistance in the face of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. With rare exceptions, the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) did not even stand its ground and fight, dissolving instead into panic and flight in a historic military debacle...
Amid much international fanfare, representatives from the U.S., South Viet Nam, North Viet Nam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government signed an "Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam" on Jan. 27, 1973 in Paris. Yet the fighting never really stopped; nor were Saigon and the Communists ever able to agree on how to carry out some of the accords' major provisions. They never exchanged maps delineating areas under their respective control (which would have recognized each other's de jure rights in those areas); they never set up the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord, which...
...signatories of the accords violated them. The U.S. broke the spirit, though not the letter, of the agreement by rushing an enormous amount of matériel to Saigon just before the cease-fire took effect. In the first year of the ceasefire, government forces expanded the land area under their control by some 20%, bringing roughly 1 million additional people under the South Vietnamese flag. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, who felt with some justification that he was being placed in an untenable no-win situation, also did all he could to block the open political struggle in South...
...time the Paris Accords were negotiated, Washington apparently misrepresented the degree to which it could guarantee aid to Saigon. The U.S. commitment to Saigon may have been unintentionally ambiguous. It is possible that Secretary of State Kissinger, in the wake of Nixon's 1972 land slide and several diplomatic triumphs of his own, simply did not expect Congress to challenge the Administration's requests...