Word: thieu
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...change in Ky has come swiftly and dramatically, partly the result of accident, partly of the kind of political intrigue with which Viet Nam seems to abound. Before the Communist Tet offensive, Ky was much more than a ceremonial Vice President alongside his rival, President Nguyen Van Thieu. Liked by American officials in Viet Nam, who admired his charm, his boundless energy and his decisiveness, Ky retained powerful friends in the Vietnamese armed forces-an entourage rated strong enough to overthrow Thieu if it ever came to a showdown. But with Tet and the harrowing onslaught against the Saigon government...
Friends Lost. Moodily brooding over his future, he began making public appearances in a Mao suit, and his pronouncements took on distinctly anti-American and anti-Thieu overtones. "If the Americans want to withdraw, they can go ahead," he told Vietnamese soldiers in Saigon. "We only want people who want to stay." On another occasion he asked his audience: "Why has South Viet Nam not been able to produce a Ho Chi Minh or Vo Nguyen Giap whom the world admires and respects? Why have we been unable to produce such people? Isn't it because our leaders...
Forming a government is a traditionally unenviable task in politically fragmented South Viet Nam, as new Premier Tran Van Huong discovered last week. It took tough bargaining with President Nguyen Van Thieu, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, the nation's collegium of generals and politicians of various persuasions. After seven days, Huong put together a Cabinet more or less acceptable to everyone. When he finally presented his choices, they failed to measure up to the hopes of those Vietnamese and Americans who had wanted the popular Huong to shape a government of national unity...
Huong did, however, bring in new men for the main posts. Senator Tran Chanh Tranh, a diplomat and political independent who is not close to either Thieu or Ky, became Foreign Minister. Four-star General Tran Thien Khiem, an ally of President Thieu and presently Ambassador to Taiwan, was named Interior Minister. Dr. Phan Quang Dan, a vice-presidential candidate who ran against the Thieu-Ky military ticket in the September elections, got the ministry dealing with defectors. Huong kept for himself the Rural Development Ministry, responsible for pacification. "The life and death of this country depend on this government...
...willing to sit down and negotiate with the Viet Cong's National Liberation Front if he were certain that it would assure "genuine peace and freedom" for South Viet Nam. Those sentiments do not endear him to Ky and his followers, who are far more fretful than Thieu about the U.S.-North Vietnamese negotiations in Paris. Ky, in fact, was off in Nha Trang when Thieu changed Premiers last week, a fact that led Saigon's hyperactive gossip mills to conclude that Ky might decide to plot a coup against Thieu in retaliation...