Word: thieu
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Kissinger and Tho were apparently unprepared for these new objections. In Saigon, acting U.S. Ambassador Charles Whitehouse conferred twice with South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam. He also spent three hours closeted with Thieu at the Presidential Palace-one of the longest meetings since the ceasefire. Next morning, another government spokesman announced that the declaration of the previous day was "inaccurate...
Quite clearly, Thieu was worried that Kissinger would make concessions to the North Vietnamese that Saigon has long opposed. Saigon, for example, fears that the U.S. will not pressure the North to withdraw its military forces from the South before national elections. Thieu refuses to accept these elections until the North Vietnamese army withdraws completely...
...does not admit that it has troops in the South, although they are indisputably there. The Communists worry that if their forces withdraw, Saigon's troops would invade Viet Cong areas, break up the V.C. cadres and arrest suspect Communist sympathizers-thus guaranteeing an election result favorable to Thieu...
Saigon also opposes any deal by Kissinger that would place a third, "uncommitted" party on the National Council for Reconciliation and Concord. Thieu insists that the council comprise only his government supporters and those of the Viet Cong's Provisional Revolutionary Government (P.R.G...
...Thieu's eleventh-hour intransigence has been rewarded in the past. He won concessions by refusing to go to the conference table in October 1968 and by balking at last October's original ceasefire terms. This time he hopes to gain reaffirmation by all parties to the agreement that any matter concerning the political sovereignty of the South Vietnamese people is to be decided by Saigon's present government and the P.R.G. Thieu's objections, together with problems brought up by the North Vietnamese, were enough, in any event, to stymie the expected agreement. Kissinger flew...