The ICCS's Impossible Mission

...If the final report pleased the Canadians, it delighted the PRG and North Vietnamese members of the JMC, since it stated that the investigating team "could not conclude that a cease-fire violation had occurred...

...It was an almost classic example of the low-level confrontations now taking place in Vietnam, but the prospect for peace-keeping rather than the fighting had aroused Major Hasck's interest...

...We report infractions if requested by the Joint Military Commission, we observe, but we have no power to change a situation...

...Laconically, he handed me his binoculars...

...We know what we're going to do...

...He was friendly with the local South Vietnamese officials and the Americans at the new Area Resettlement and Reconstruction Office...

...We argued that we must put on a time limit for the JMC to reply or the PRG would delay the investigation, but it still took another day for them to say anything...

...At that point the Canadian delegation might have abandoned the quest, except for the fact that in this case their Eastern European counterparts could hardly plead the road to the scene was insecure...

...The leader of the Indonesian delegation, rotating as chairman of the regional center, could not reach the ICCS chairman in Saigon by telephone to request his formal approval...

...The pattern of a generation of warfare does not seem about to change very soon...

...Perhaps more to the point, under the terms of the Paris agreement there was no need for Saigon's "approval...

...combat officers in the early years of the war...

...So do the PRG [the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government...

...Tall, greying, cautious...

...Want to find out what's happening...

...It's our resident battle," Major Hasek remarked somewhat wearily as we returned to the regional compound...

...His tone hardened and his smile tightened into a glare when he went on to accuse the United States and South Vietnam of conspiring to "frame up" the PRG...

...Army chapel...

...We are prepared for all kinds of incidents," said the Colonel, an Air Force officer trained as a navigator on Soviet-built transportation planes...

...Colonel Frank Campbell...

...Citing the figures for the two months immediately following the cease-fire, the Canadian secretary of state for externa] affairs, Mitchell Sharp, said: "We were told by our briefers that it had been estimated that there had been some 7,000 incidents...

...The reality of the situation was underlined for me in a conversation with the head of the Polish delegation at Phan Thiet, Colonel Marian Kozlowski, whom I met initially at a Steve McQueen movie about auto racing...

...This was blanket vindication of the Vietcong guerrillas, who had almost certainly fired the round...

...We're hoping the JMC will ask the ICCS to carry out its own investigation...

...The pattern of debate confirmed a charge that has been made by the chief Canadian delegate to the ICCS, Ambassador Michel Gauvin: "We have no difficulty getting the other members of the Commission to report unfavorably on ARVN violations, but we can never get the Poles and Hungarians to agree on a negative report concerning the PRG...

...By continuing to serve in the ICCS, we would be staying on to observe not a peace, not a cease-fire but a continuing war...

...For all these limitations, however, the Canadians were determinedly optimistic...

...It is an honor to perform this duty despite the heavy task...

...The berets, in fact, were not new at all...

...He preferred to engage in gentle persuasion, careful review of the terms of the agreement, and exposition of the facts...

...He and his ICCS colleagues lived in a small hotel near the market and dined quite often at either of two pleasant, leisurely Chinese restaurants...

...If PRG forces were in the village and the South Vietnamese were shelling, then naturally the PRG welcomed the prospect of an ICCS inquiry...

...Perhaps Saigon is too full of complaints," he replied blandly, "and besides there is trouble with the telephone...

...He noted proudly that the ICCS at Phan Thiet produced one of the first "unanimous" reports in all Vietnam after six persons were killed and 13 were wounded by a mortar round fired into the central Market...

...Then the PRG refused to support the investigation...

...The only question that mattered for either side was who controlled what territory...

...If South Vietnamese troops were pa-troling territory in their hands and Vietcong guerrillas ambushed them, the South Vietnamese righteously demanded the aid of "objective observers"—that is, if their troops still held the territory after the ambush...

...The JMC, of course, never asked...

...There's no cease-fire," he told me not long after my visit to Phan Thiet...

...But the Poles and Hungarians found another ruse for holding up the investigation...

...Donald Kirk is the Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune "The point about the mission," a major from Calgary observed when I accosted him on the steps of the Continental Hotel, "is that its supervisory capability lies in the terms of the agreement...

...It was not a bad way to spend a hardship tour, yet it was clear that Major Hasek was extremely bored and damned impatient for action Both the South Vietnamese and PRG members of the JMC—which also included U.S...

...Three days later we finally got the approval from the Hungarian ambassador, who was serving that week as overall ICCS chairman...

...diplomats pressured them to participate in it...

...I could see a South Vietnamese L-10 spotter plane turning lazy circles over dusty rice paddies...

...We're not giving up," he said, in the pursed-lip style of a field officer stubbornly clinging to a position that he knew was untenable...

...The first thing we did when we got the complaint from the South Vietnamese late one evening was to agree we would get a copy to the Joint Military Commission first thing in the morning," said the Colonel...

...has denounced the "unanimous ICCS reports" as "meaningless" and said the Canadians and Indonesians would "submit separate reports" fixing the blame when necessary on the PRG or the North Vietnamese...

...Highly trained, with previous experience on any of a dozen other peace-keeping missions from Kashmir to New Guinea to Yemen, the 250-odd members of the Canadian delegation of the ICCS came to Vietnam after the signing of the January 27 cease-fire agreement, exuding much the same verve and comaraderie that could be seen among U.S...

...We're ready to go in the bush, all of us," he added with a kind of gung-ho aggressiveness...

...We shouldn't be waiting for complaints...

...Whenever the PRG wanted an investigation, the South Vietnamese opposed it...

...The general situation has not improved...

...Finally Major Hasek had to accept defeat—or, more properly, another frustration...

...As we drove on a dirt road inland from this coastal fishing town, he explained with some embarrassment that his "investigation" was entirely unauthorized...

...The PRG was protesting incessant artillery and air strikes by the ARVN, while the South Vietnamese charged the PRG with ambushing a patrol early one morning...

...It's abandoned, blown away, but the people still go there to work the fields...

...Sure," Colonel Campbell conceded, "the investigation proved nothing in itself...

...We should just pile into our jeeps and make our presence known...

...They've been fighting for Ap Tan Binh, a hamlet two kilometers from here," he said...

...At Phan Thiet, as elsewhere, Polish and Hungarian officers delayed most attempts at serious investigations by claiming that members of the JMC had failed to provide the necessary guarantees...

...Colonel Campbell was not entirely unhappy with the region's record, though...

...One couldn't help commenting that it seemed a sign of the fundamental lack of rapport between the non-Communist and Communist delegations that they rarely made contact outside the conference room even though they live in the same hotels in town and occupied offices within 50 feet of each other on the air base...

...The Major, a Czech-born, British-educated career officer named John Hasek, quickly sketched the scene...

...Colonel Kozlowski...

...we think nobody fired it," reasoned Major Huynh, smiling pleasantly, offering me banana candy, and pouring a glass of vodka distilled in Hanoi from a bottle with Russian lettering on it...

...when the South Vietnamese wanted an investigation, the PRG opposed...

...The major sank back psychologically into the lethargy of the assignment...

...Indeed, Canadian regional team leaders have difficulty just persuading the Poles and Hungarians that the roads are safe enough for them to travel...

...If the JMC asks us, we will do it...

...They said the Poles and Hungarians, if persuaded to visit the scene of a ceasefire "violation," would listen respectfully to statements implicating the Vietcong and then deny having heard them on returning to headquarters...

...in fact it has deteriorated," said Sharp in a speech to the Canadian House of Commons...

...They pointed to the unpleasant precedent of the original International Control Commission, formed under the 1954 Geneva agreement on Indochina with delegations from Canada, Poland and India...

...It would be the first real chance we've had since coming here...

...We were in luck because it happened right in town," said Major Hasek...

...My feeling is we must get into a much more active 'observer' role," he said...

...and North Vietnamese representatives for the first 60 days after the signing of the truce—had indicated they would ask the ICCS to look into the skirmishing at Ap Tarn Binh, albeit for entirely different reasons...

...personally courteous when buttonholed after the movie, was entirely uninforma-tive on the subject of the mortar incident...

...For all his patience, the Colonel could not help but reflect the exasperation of the entire Canadian contingent in Vietnam...

...At Cantho, Canadian officers serving under Von Nostitz, one of the few civilians leading a regional delegation, claimed the Poles and Hungarians had obstructed communications with Saigon by fiddling with the radio equipment...

...It was two months later, in late March, that I traveled some 100 miles east of Saigon to visit the regional headquarters at Phan Thiet and encountered Major Hasek in his jeep outside the old American military advisory compound, now used by the JMC...

...That way every day," said Hasek, before changing for his afternoon run around the base...

...Even the eager, determined Major Hasek would have to agree...

...We think the cease-fire will eventually come," said the officer, awaiting orders to go to one of seven regional ICCS headquarters at critical points from Hue and Danang in the northern provinces to Cantho in the Mekong River Delta...

...Shells occasionally boomed in the distance, smoke gusted where they hit-and the sounds of the explosions reverberated seconds later...

...In the Mekong River delta region, a strong-minded young diplomat named Manfred Von Nostitz, in charge of the Canadian delegation at Cantho...

...Colonel Campbell did not share Major Hasek's impetuous desire to get to the fighting, at least not without the approval of the other regional delegations...

...Both sides are requesting an investigation through the Joint Military Commission," he noted...

...Out of these have emerged only 31 requests for investigation by the ICCS...

...Technically, he said, the Canadians and the other members of the ICCS—from Hungary, Indonesia and Poland—were "just observers...

...Yet the delays probably had little substantive effect...

...So I just want to get out and take a look before all the ICCS people begin falling all over each other...

...That is his own commander on the Canadian delegation of the International Commission for Control and Supervision knew what he was doing, but representatives of the other ICCS countries had not been told about the expedition-and would doubtlessly have frowned on it...

...There are four North Vietnamese regiments in Chuong Thien province south of here—three of them arrived after the signing of the cease-fire...

...The battle was petty in the overall context of the fighting even after the cease-fire, but it gave Major Hasek an excuse to get out of town...

...Army's Special Forces...

...Officers from the four ICCS delegations were there, banded together in their own national cliques and clearly identifiable by their uniforms...

...So maybe the shell exploded by itself...

...Strolling along the streets of Saigon in their dark green bermuda shorts and green berets, they were novelties to the jaded eyes of taxi drivers and bargirls lamenting the vanishing American GIs...

...The ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] are well established, and they send night patrols to Ap Tan Binh...

...Nevertheless, his description of the investigation did more to illustrate the basic weakness of the ICCS than to prove its long-range potential...

...Bitter, frustrating experience with the ICC . . . conditioned the Government's wary approach to any new involvement in Vietnam," said an official Canadian press release, explaining why Canada at the outset limited its membership in the new ICCS to a 60-day trial period...

...We sat drinking cups of thick black coffee in a snack stand across the road from the JMC conference room, a white clapboard building once used as a U.S...

...We got only as far as the outpost nearest the abandoned village, where a South Vietnamese officer persuaded us not to continue on because the ARVN was shelling the area in anticipation of a PRG attack...

...There's nothing in the Paris agreement to keep us from initiating our own investigation if all four commission members approve...

...Why didn't the ICCS investigate the real fighting outside of town rather than piddle away its time on a stray mortar round...

...He saw it, rather, as a first faltering step and hoped it would induce the Poles and Hungarians to cooperate on inquiries into incidents of a much more serious nature...

...In one case, involving the killing of 15 persons by a grenade thrown into a Buddhist pagoda, the Canadians and Indonesians finally signed their own report when the Poles and Hungarians discounted a monk's word that Vietcong agents had threatened to blow up the pagoda several days earlier...

...The Canadians, notably Sharp, were skeptical about the efficacy of the ICCS from the moment U.S...

...They were made, it was soon revealed, by the same Canadian manufacturer that turned out the "green berets" for the U.S...

...From these requests just two Commission reports have emerged" (one of them, presumably, being on the mortaring in Phan Thiet...

...The two most responsible parties, the South Vietnamese and the PRG, both have to guarantee security or the Poles and Hungarians won't go anywhere," said the leader of the six-man Canadian regional delegation...

...By the time the investigation was really launched, five days after the mortar round was fired, much of the evidence of the blast had disappeared...

...At no time will we become involved in armed conflict," said the Canadian, who had served six months in the Suez in 1967...

...Why did the investigation take so long to begin, I asked...

...In contrast to real peace-keepers, armed on Cyprus to shoot to kill if necessary to maintain order, the ICCS representatives in the field could only carry side-arms for self-defense...

...The North Vietnamese are rolling across the Cambodian border...

...You can't go anywhere these days without written authorization from Saigon," said Campbell...

...So we may say that the ICCS had a very objective opinion and has come to a very right and reasonable conclusion," said a North Vietnamese Major, Phan Huynh, whom I met in the conference room of his compound shortly before the departure of all North Vietnamese JMC delegates at the end of their 60-day participation period...

...Wiry, athletic, tough-looking, he kept himself trim by running two or three miles each afternoon around the small air base beyond a cemetery on the edge of town where the ICCS maintained its offices...

...It gave us a chance for a test case...

...all the Poles and Hungarians would have conceded under any circumstances was that a mortar round had indeed been fired, and that much they ultimately did...

...The sense of depression, oi futility among the Canadian officers at Phan Thiet is being experienced by Canadians everywhere in Vietnam...

...No one can say for certain whether the Hungarian chairman's line was perpetually out of order, or whether the Canadians are right in believing that he was deliberately attempting to sabotage an inquiry that might reflect badly on the PRG...

...said Colonel Kozlowski, speaking to me through a bright young civilian interpreter whom the Canadians were convinced was an intelligence or political agent-and possibly the real leader of the Polish team...

...Doesn't look like anything will come of it," he told me, "they're still talking over procedure...

...Meanwhile, the leaders of each of the ICCS delegations here merely passed their time debating endlessly inside a remodeled shack built by GIs several years ago...

...Sharp then lengthened the trial until the end of June, but his skepticism was not diminished...

...It's kind of like the oldest established permanent floating crap game...

...Get in my jeep," he offered, "I'm going out a little way...

...That's when the clashes occur...