Second Attempt at a Truce

Viet Nam peace negotiations have by now acquired a certain deja vu quality. Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Viet Nam's Le Due Tho confer in Paris and make a tentative deal.

Then Kissinger, or an aide, flies off to Saigon to win the concurrence of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, who raises some objections. The two principal negotiators go back to Paris to resolve the difficulties. That is the point at which Kissinger will find himself this week when he once again meets Those in an attempt to resuscitate the faltering Viet Nam truce.

In Washington last week, Kissinger stressed that this supposedly final round of talks "concerns almost entirely methods of implementation rather than renegotiation." The discussions were necessary, he went on, because of a lack of "willingness to observe provisions that are clearly understood"--apparently a reference to Saigon as well as Hanoi.

Translated into plain English, Kissinger's statement amounted to an unhappy admission that fighting has continued in the four months since the truce agreement was signed. In spite of their questionable accuracy, figures released last week by Saigon reflect the level of violence: 21,455 Communist and 5,510 South Vietnamese soldiers killed, at least 3,530 civilians dead or wounded.

Neither Side. To be sure, there have been some notable changes since January. American G.I.s have gone home, prisoners have been exchanged, and Viet Cong officers--escorted always by South Vietnamese security troops--drive around Saigon. There is also the ineffectual presence of the four-nation International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), created to monitor the adherence of both sides to the truce. The Hungarian and Polish commission members, who consider themselves Hanoi's representatives, have employed dilatory and obstructionist tactics to prevent the Canadian and Indonesian members from investigating reported truce violations. Last week External Affairs Minister Mitchell Sharp announced that Canada would quit the paralyzed, dissension-torn ICCS at the end of July. A high-ranking Canadian official privately explained that his government was tired of trying "to supervise a peace that is kept by neither side."

The decision by Ottawa was a distinct disappointment to Washington, which had urged the Canadians to stay on, arguing that in another month or so many of the frustrating problems of the ICCS might be resolved. Convinced that Canada's decision is final, the State Department has sounded out Brazil and Mexico as possible replacements.

Washington's belief that things may be looking up is based on the expectation that Kissinger and Tho will announce an agreement, which, among other things, will provide for an immediate and strict cease-fire throughout South Viet Nam and a withdrawal of all troops from the Demilitarized Zone. More important, the two sides must exchange maps delineating the areas under their control. Next, the National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord must constitute itself to include representatives of the Viet Cong, the Thieu government and members of the so-called third party. Under the truce signed in January, this council should have been in operation by the end of April. One of its principal tasks is to prepare the way for a national election. Thieu, however, will oppose any attempt by the council to function as a coalition government superior to him. For its part, the U.S. will cease aerial reconnaissance flights over North Viet Nam and will resume the mine-clearing operations in the North's harbors and rivers. It will also resume talks with Hanoi about postwar economic aid.

Saigon, under U.S. pressure, apparently has accepted these terms. Hanoi too is amenable, perhaps because it has already replaced most of the materiel it expended during the 1972 Easter offensive. The North also seems to have shifted its strategy. Its party line these days is that a great victory has been won, since for the first time in 115 years no foreign troops occupy Viet Nam. Now the revolution must be carried forward by political rather than military means. One Communist directive urges its cadres to work harder at building the economic and political infrastructure by growing rice and making villages self-sufficient. In some areas, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops spend at least half of each day planting crops and cutting wood.

This socially oriented industriousness is accompanied by an ideological soft-sell. Recently, for example, a Viet Cong unit in the Delta captured a 17-year-old boy and carried him off to a Communist-controlled area. Instead of forcibly drafting him into the army, cadre members talked to him for five days, showed him life on the "other side," and then asked him if he wanted to remain. When he declined, he was set free.

Expanded Regime. This new approach suggests that the Communists might really be willing to give the truce a chance, at least for a time. With a cease-fire in Laos more or less in effect, that would leave only the Cambodian mess to be resolved. The U.S. hopes it can nudge Cambodia's former head of state, exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and Khmer insurgent leaders into talks with members of the expanded regime of Marshal Lon Nol in Phnom-Penh.

The survival of the Lon Nol government is due in large measure to continued U.S. bombing of Khmer insurgent positions. The days of that kind of help may be numbered. In the U.S. Senate last week, a majority of Republicans and Democrats voted 63-19 in favor of an amendment that would shut off funds for further bombing of Cambodia. The House passed a similar though less sweeping measure in early May. When and if the two houses approve a compromise version, Congress will, for the first time, be united in formal opposition to continued U.S. fighting in Southeast Asia.

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