Monday, Mar. 15, 1954
Controversy Ended?
The Ministers of France gathered one morning last week in the President's Elysee Palace to hear a crucial report from the Minister of Defense, just back from the Indo-China battle fronts. The military situation is not critical, reported Rene Pleven, but it is discouraging. The French Union forces cannot win decisively over the Communists, but they can keep the Communists from winning. Pleven's recommendation: hold on and try to negotiate an honorable settlement of the Indo-China war.
Cautiously, Premier Joseph Laniel and Foreign Minister Georges Bidault tried to extract a policy out of the paradox of a war France could find no way to win yet dared not lose. The Geneva Conference was not far off. The National Assembly demanded to know how the government proposed to stand when the diplomats at Geneva discussed Indo-China.
No Such Conditions. Two days later Premier Laniel, trim and neat in a blue suit, with a white handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket, lumbered into the Assembly to take on the debaters. Why did the government not accept Indian Prime Minister Nehru's proposal for a ceasefire, to be followed by negotiations? the Socialists demanded. Was it because the Americans said not to? The U.S., added Socialist Daniel Mayer, is, after all, paying most of the bill in the war.
A thin, hawklike Deputy from the Communist "Progressive" party leaned over the tribune and taunted the Government Ministers. France, he insisted, is paying for U.S. aid by letting the U.S. call out the tune.
From his seat, Laniel boomed: "No! No such political conditions have been imposed." He rose and went to the tribune. "We have studied this question with all attention possible," said he. "We consider as inacceptable all plans which, under the color of a 'cease-fire,' would begin by putting in peril our soldiers and our friends without . . . guarantees of ... a durable peace."
Then Laniel ticked off France's conditions for an Indo-Chinese ceasefire: 1) evacuation of all Reds from the states of Laos and Cambodia; 2) creation of an agreed no man's land around the perimeter of the vital Red River Delta; 3) withdrawal of scattered Communist units in central Viet Nam into predesignated "standing zones" from which they could not move; 4) disarming or evacuation of Viet Minh rebels in south Viet Nam; 5) guarantees against "reinforcements"--presumably war supplies from Communist China.
No Point in Arguing. Laniel's conditions were plainly too much to ask of Ho Chi Minh's far-from-beaten Viet Minh forces, and the French government knew it when it allowed Laniel to make them public. But they were a deliberate prelude to something else. "Up until 1953," said Laniel, "two tendencies clashed in French opinion. Some hoped for an end to the conflict by negotiation. Others believed that we might triumph by force of arms . . . Today, this controversy is ended. In fact, we are unanimous from here on in hoping to settle the war by negotiation. This is understood. There is no point in anyone arguing . . ."
It did not mean that the French were preparing to quit the war and let Communism funnel down into all Southeast Asia. But it was clear notice to the Communists--and to France's allies--that the French were abandoning the notion of winning the Indo-Chinese war, and that they were going to Geneva next month with compromise in their hearts.
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