Word: thieu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Originally, South Viet Nam's President Thieu requested a session with President Nixon in Washington. Secretary of State William Rogers, on a visit to Saigon, suggested a rendezvous halfway. The danger of antiwar demonstrations, at least, should be absent at the U.S.-owned garrison isle of Midway. Regardless of the setting, the Midway meeting-designed to align U.S. and South Vietnamese positions for the peace negotiations-may well be more important than any of the five previous summits that have punctuated...
...session with the Battle of Midway, which, 27 years ago this week, turned the tide in the Pacific war. If the comparison was vastly exaggerated, it did express Saigon's fear that the Nixon Administration might be willing to make concessions in Paris that would destroy the Thieu regime. "Our government obviously wants to know the intentions of the United States," said Pham Dang Lam, Saigon's chief negotiator in Paris, who then pointedly recalled Nixon's words that "a great nation cannot renege on its pledges...
Official Anathema. One of the most reassuring things about the speech was the fact that South Viet Nam's leadership, which has balked before at certain U.S. conciliation moves, approved of every major point. President Thieu, in fact, read a final draft of the speech and objected to nothing-including the possibility of holding elections before the constitutionally scheduled date, and U.S. willingness to allow the neutralization of South Viet Nam. Neutralization, which many Saigon politicians fear will lead to takeover by the North, remains officially anathema in South Viet Nam; at least one politician is still in jail...
...turned out to be fruitful, Ky would take over. The agenda? Ky's advisers said he was planning to discuss the gamut of problems, from the war itself to the issues of withdrawal and a ceasefire. Any reports that some concrete concessions were in hand were scotched by Thieu himself: "I cannot tell you what we can offer them right now. It depends on their attitude...
Gamut of Problems. In Saigon, reaction to Thieu's move was mixed. Mrs. Kieu Mong Thu, a militant Buddhist member of the National Assembly, said that "President Thieu should have thought of this measure sooner." Supporters of Lawyer Truong Dinh Dzu, the runner-up in the 1967 presidential elections who campaigned on a peace platform and is now in jail, reminded the world that Dzu was sentenced to five years at hard labor last year for suggesting direct talks with the N.L.F. "Thieu should get ten years," said a Saigon politician. A leader of the North Vietnamese Catholic refugees...