Word: thieu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Lyndon Johnson announced that he was extending his limited bombing halt to cover all of North Viet Nam. U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker waited a week for South Viet namese tempers to cool-and for the American elections to end. Then he went to work to persuade President Nguyen Van Thieu to agree to send a delegation to Paris. So strained were the sessions that Deputy U.S. Ambassador Samuel Berger, who had been particularly unreceptive to Saigon's demands during earlier talks, had to be packed off to Hawaii. Thieu, under pressure from hard-liners within his own government, wanted...
Victory of Sorts. The tough negotiations cost Thieu considerable sleep and, according to his wife, "one or two notches" in his belt. But he won a personal victory of sorts. In part, Thieu's delay was a face-saving gesture. But in forcing some concessions from the U.S., he enhanced the credibility of his government as an independent entity rather than the "puppet" regime that the Communists are so fond of belaboring. Finally, Thieu strengthened his domestic position, and averted a rebellion among the hardliners, who are fearful of a sellout in Paris...
...Thieu quickly began assembling a 100-man team to attend the talks, announced that Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, while not actually heading the delegation, would be "supervising, controlling, directing, going between Saigon and Paris to receive instructions." Ky will also bring his lissome wife Mai to Paris as Saigon's answer to the Viet Cong's attractive Madame Nguyen Thi Binh (see THE WORLD...
That possibility continued throughout last week to be stymied by the unwillingness of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to agree to send a delegation to Paris and sit at the same negotiating table with the National Liberation Front of the Viet Cong. There were reports and rumors that he was about to change his mind. But the delay brought to nearly a month the elapsed time since the bombing halt. Meanwhile, the war on the ground in South Viet Nam sputtered...
...same time, Saigon claimed that, despite the understanding that cities should not be hit, the Communists had shelled 98 civilian areas in the first two weeks since the halt-five times as heavy a bombardment as in the fortnight preceding it. Such statistics would clearly be useful to Thieu if he wanted further justification for boycotting the talks...