Hanoi's Peace Plan

...South Vietnamese soldiers and civil servants are urged "to save themselves," and defect...

...He called the bombing halt "only the first step toward total victory," and said the new important phase of the war would be "especially in Saigon, the struggle to restore peace, overthrow the Thieu-Ky puppet regime and form a peace cabinet...

...Dzu prophesied he would become the leader of South Vietnam...

...Truong Dinh Dzu, the unsuccessful Presidential candidate jailed last July for endorsing talks with the nlf, might lead an interim peace government...

...At that time (late January 1967), Mao Tse-tung's Red Guards were besieging the Soviet Embassy in Peking...

...It's essentially a matter of forming a political base...

...Throughout South Vietnam, the Vietcong have been holding village and hamlet elections for "people's liberation committees" that will decide, presumably after the Americans pull out, "who are friends and who are foes, who are citizens and who have lost citizens' rights...

...Embassy's senior liaison officer with the Vietnamese, agreed then that the terms sounded authentic...

...acting as a kind of public relations man in Hanoi, in an interview he gave to the Tokyo Sankui last August...

...The military war is a gimmick...

...Since Clifford's statement, the constant theme of both Radio Hanoi and the Viet-cong's clandestine Liberation Radio is that the Thieu government is "in decline...

...The Vietcong would drop their arms and peacefully collaborate with a non-Communist government in Saigon...

...The main outlines of the present approach appear to go back to an article by Truong Chinh, chairman of the North Vietnamese Central Committee...

...and (5) the formation of a coalition government between this federation of Communist fronts and "acceptable nationalist elements...

...Land reform is a gimmick...

...President Johnson doesn't...

...Nobody can talk peace with Thieu or Ky...

...Aside from the return to guerrilla war, Hanoi seems to be preparing for the new phase of the conflict on many fronts...

...Captured enemy documents have already revealed massive numbers of South Vietnamese on lists of those slated for execution or "loss of citizenship rights," implying a repeat of the North Vietnamese experience after 1954 in which relatively few were shot outright, but tens of thousands were driven into suicide and starvation as "anti-people...

...These appeals found an echo in a declaration of Tri Quang on November 21 formally launching a new movement for peace and demanding that "all sides must find a way to an immediate ceasefire...

...Some of the most authoritative analysts in Washington agree Hanoi is playing on fears that the United States is in a hurry to liquidate its part in the war even if this means making major concessions...

...You don't...

...A few days earlier, a joint statement from the by-now-federatcd nlf and Alliance urged government soldiers and civil servants to "demand the abolition of the puppet Thieu-Ky-Huong regime, the setting up of a government that represents the people's aspirations for peace, and one that is fully competent to take part in the Paris talks...

...On November 4, Thich Thien Hao, the only Buddhist monk on the nlf's Central Committee, declared, "We Buddhists who abide by Buddha's laws of mercy are the most eager for peace...

...and participation by the National Liberation Front (nlf) in elections, so long as it recognizes the legitimacy of the Saigon government and its present constitutional structure...

...Nguyen Van Tien, the nlf's official spokesman for Hanoi, told a Japanese newsman two weeks ago that "under certain conditions" a new coalition government could be formed "even before general elections," but added, "it would be only an interim government...

...Since Dzu advocated peace at any price and most of his vote came from remote and insecure rural provinces, not from the cities where he campaigned, there was speculation that he received massive Vietcong support...

...Hanoi has always taken the line the Thieu-Ky regime is a puppet of the Americans...

...2) the creation of a "neutralist" caretaker regime...

...Now these boys come driving right down the middle of the avenue...

...But these elements were to be allowed to form a new popular front to be called the "Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces...

...Exactly where the elections fit into this timetable appears to be undecided...

...4) the creation of a "federated body" composed of members of Hanoi's two Communist-led popular fronts in the south, the nlf and the newer Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces (created a year after the nlf contact first told me about it...

...On November 3, the Buddhist monk Thich Tri Quang, twice arrested as a suspected Communist agent and certainly South Vietnam's most experienced coup-maker, bitterly denounced Thieu to a Japanese television interviewer and said "anything which will lead to an immediate termination of the Vietnamese war will be welcome...

...He first announced a return to guerrilla warfare last summer, calling for a "shift to the defensive to gain time, dishearten the enemy, and build up our forces to prepare for a new offensive...

...Dzu's name was first mentioned by the Australian Communist journalist, Wilfred Burchett...

...paper as a prelude to possible negotiations...

...3) new national elections...

...Both Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy and Major General Edward G. Lansdale, the U.S...

...If the Communists go to the conference table, they have to give their political cadres convincing explanations...

...In an interview with this reporter a year ago...

...It sounded ludicrous at the time, but Dzu said: "Thieu and Ky can never negotiate a peace settlement...

...On the political front, Hanoi is urging: (1) the overthrow of the present Saigon government...

...the nlf would be dissolved and the Southern wing of the Vietnamese Communist apparatus, the People's Revolutionary party, would be disbanded...

...In fact...

...Events in Paris and Saigon have changed the sound of Dzu's words...

...1969 may see his prophecy fulfilled...

...Hanoi's response to President Johnson's bomb halt, and especially to Defense Secretary Clark Clifford's statement that U.S.-North Vietnamese talks for a "military arrangement" could proceed even without a Saigon delegation in Paris, suggest a revival of the nlf strategy...

...In the past five or six weeks, too, North Vietnam has launched a major new propaganda offensive to persuade South Vietnam's Buddhists, students and soldiers to overthrow President Nguyen Van Thieu's government and replace it with one willing to negotiate with the National Liberation Front...

...Diem didn't...

...Hanoi, I was told, feared a possible break in Sino-Soviet state relations and had empowered Deputy Chairman Phat to make contacts in Saigon with the Americans should such a break occur...

...Indeed...

...Two years ago almost these exact terms were outlined to me in a clandestine interview with a representative of nlf Deputy Chairman Huynh Tan Phat...

...Dzu, a slick Saigon lawyer twice arrested for embezzling and passing a bad check, was virtually unknown in South Vietnam until he was Thieu's runner-up in the 1967 elections...

...Providing a "reasonably liberal" government was installed in Saigon, I was told, Hanoi would seek these conditions: In return for a cessation of Northern air strikes, Hanoi would agree to withdraw its troops and a like number of political cadres in a move coordinated with an American withdrawal according to the Manila offer...

...Both radios have repeatedly quoted statements favoring an early end to the war by Clifford, Richard M. Nixon, Senator Mike Mansfield, Senator Eugene McCarthy and others, and have warned: "No force on earth can save the Saigon puppet Administration from collapse for its death knell has already sounded...

...Gradually the puzzle is fitting together, although some of the pieces are still missing...

...a cease-fire, with the Viet-cong laying down their arms in return for amnesty...

...Lansdale exploded in frustration: "Nobody understands the Vietnam problem...

...Those named include Roman Catholics, members of the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai sects, the anti-Communist Kuomintang party of Hue and Danang, and every Vietnamese who has ever worked on an American payroll...

...They include a withdrawal of North Vietnamese and American forces from South Vietnam in accordance with the Manila communique of October 1966...

...On November 12, Liberation Radio appealed to Saigon "high school and university students" to prepare for "demonstrations to demand the overthrow of the Thieu-Ky-Huong Administration and the establishment of a new government which will negotiate with the nlf...

...Tien has also informed Japanese interviewers that Hanoi is not interested in a cease-fire but wants to keep a low-level guerrilla war going...

...The scenario for Thieu's overthrow has been unfolding gradually...

...Hanoi has intimated that Tri Quang's old ally...

...I was put in touch with an nlf representative who presented me with terms he wished published in a Washington newsRobert Critchfield, author of The Long Charade: Political Subversion in the Vietnam War, urn until last year Vietnam correspondent for tlie Washington Evening Star...