Word: thieu
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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...
...case Washington did not get the message, Thieu was saying much the same thing on visits to the two other most staunchly anti-Communist countries of Asia, South Korea and Taiwan. In Seoul, as balloons held aloft huge Vietnamese and Korean flags, he warned against "a false peace, a counterfeit peace." South Korea's tough President Chung Hee Park, who has sent 50,000 of his own men to South Viet Nam, agreed with his guest that a coalition with the Viet Cong was out of the question and that recognition of the legitimacy of the present government would...
...Thieu approved President Nixon's May 14 speech before it was delivered. But partly as a result of subsequent reporting out of Washington, he discovered hidden nuances that disturbed him. In the somewhat Delphic address, Nixon had talked of establishing "procedures for political choice that give each significant group in South Viet Nam a real opportunity to participate in the political life of the nation." That could mean, among other things, Viet Cong participation in future elections and thereafter in a future government. Thieu has gone as far as that, although only on the difficult condition that the Viet...
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...