Word: thieu
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SEPT. 11. For the first time since Kissinger began secret talks with Hanoi in August 1969, the North Vietnamese hinted that they would accept a cease-fire in South Viet Nam without the removal of President Nguyen Van Thieu. A genuine compromise at least seemed possible...
...major fighting immediately, a U.S. withdrawal and the return of the American prisoners of war within 60 days, and for the establishment of a purposefully vague political process through which the Vietnamese would work out their future later on. In broad terms, the compromise awarded to the narrowly based Thieu regime a chance to survive and to the Communists legitimacy in South Viet Nam, plus an affirmation of Hanoi's position that Viet Nam is one country, temporarily divided...
...lawyer's eye told him that some of the provisions might need some tightening up and that Kissinger would have to nail down the understandings and protocols for the cease-fire machinery. But he was pleased, approved the plan and ordered Kissinger to Saigon to sell it to Thieu. The only dark cloud was a prescient warning by the CIA to expect serious trouble from Thieu...
...Kissinger and his entourage were in high spirits when they arrived in Saigon for the first meeting with Thieu, a 3½-hour session in the presidential palace attended by most of the South Vietnamese National Security Council. But the mood changed abruptly. Thieu complained that he was not ready for a ceasefire. Kissinger bluntly replied that the peace plan offered many advantages for South Viet Nam and gave Thieu a "fighting chance" to survive-all that could be hoped for in any compromise deal...
Kissinger reportedly insisted that "we were successful in Peking, we were successful in Moscow, we were even successful in Paris. There is no reason," he added, "why we cannot be successful here." At that point, Thieu's young (29) chief assistant Hoang Duc Nha interrupted Kissinger with a short but heated lecture. "So far," said Nha, "history has shown that the United States has been successful in many fields. But history does not predict that in the future the United States will be successful here...