The Eagle and the Fox

WHETHER PRESIDENT NIXON will choose now, after re-election, to negotiate a settlement of the war on terms that are palatable to the North Vietnamese is a question which requires close attention. Of even more crucial importance, however, are the ways in which the various South Vietnamese parties adjust themselves to terms of settlement which will not give a decisive advantage to either of the main contenders, the Saigon government and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG).

The United States is anxious to extract further concessions from the North Vietnamese on substantive issues including the withdrawal of some of the North Vietnamese troops in northern South Vietnam; the date for the international supervisory body to commence work in South Vietnam; the strengthening of safeguards on the ceasefire; and the nature of the "National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord" which will organize elections.

While the North Vietnamese have said on several occasions in the last week that they are willing to hold another series of secret negotiations at the request of the United States, they feel that many of the above problems have already been settled. A report in last Friday's Boston Evening Globe indicated that Hanoi had begun withdrawing some of its troops from northern South Vietnam. In an interview in Sunday's New York Times, North Vietnam's ambassador to the Paris negotiations, Xuan Thuy, said that the international supervisory commission could begin its operations as soon as the peace agreement is signed. Hanoi's press spokesman in Paris insisted on October 27 that the U.S. and North Vietnam had already agreed on arrangements on safeguarding the ceasefire and the "prerogatives, function and procedure" of the National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, The New York Times reported.

While the North Vietnamese consider the council to be a "power structure" with administrative independence from the Saigon government and the PRG, the United States sees it as an "institutionalization of the electoral commission" that it had previously proposed. In his October 26 news conference. Henry A. Kissinger '50 failed to stress the organizational independence of the council or to specify that the PRG would have the right to participate. Kissinger has stated that the council will operate on a principle of unanimity, but further details on its functioning are lacking.

Concessions demanded by the Saigon government include complete withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops before a ceasefire. Recent historical experience would make such a requirement untenably for Hanoi, however. When North Vietnam withdraw from the South in 1954 at the time of ceasefire, Saigon failed to comply with the provision of the 1954 Geneva agreements that there be elections in 1956.

THE NORTH VIETNAMESE consider that the continued presence of their troops in the South will insure Saigon's compliance with the new agreement. Hopefully, President Thieu will noon realize that he can only obtain guarantees for the eventual withdrawal of the northern troops if all the political factions in the South agree beforehand that the victor in the elections will follow a strictly neutral foreign policy, release all political prisoners, guarantee individual liberties, and work diligently to rebuilt the country. Such an agreement should not be too difficult for Thieu since he and other South Vietnamese officials endorsed the idea of Southeast Asian neutrality following the November 1971 conference of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Malaysia.

The PRG is upset over the failure of the secret draft agreement to provide for the release of political prisoners held by the Saigon government. A story in The New York Times last Thursday said that Vietnamese in Paris have received reports that the Saigon government has recently begun torturing an imprisoned Saigon student leader. The article also said that persons whom the PRG wants to participate in the National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord would remain in Saigon jails according to the terms of the draft agreement.

It would be inconsistent with the nature of a ceasefire that either party would continue to assasinate, torture, kidnap or arrest suspect members of the opposition. If the U.S. and North Vietnam have not yet agreed to a "political" ceasefire in the South then their new agreement will not last. The present Vietnam War started because of the repressive policies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. North Vietnam entered actively into the war only after the U.S. dispatched troops to protect the tottering Diem regime from southern insurgents.

THE OCTOBER SECRET negotiations would not have come close to agreement if the parties had not stalemate. Nevertheless, the flurry of diplomatic activity on the part of the United States and North Vietnam should not obscure the fact that it is the people of South Vietnam who will gain or lose the most as a result of a settlement.

If the South Vietnamese are of goodwill, Ambassador Xuan Thuy told The New York Times, "we can settle immediately, but without goodwill, we can do nothing." His words bring to mind the "Eagle and the Fox" by the ancient Greek slave Aesop. The eagle had pledged to be friends with the fox. But one day, while it was away hunting, the eagle abducted the fox's cubs to feed to her hungry eaglets. The fox was unable to take revenge until a burning entrail, which the eagle had brought home from a sacrificial altar, set her nest on fire. As the eaglets fell to the ground, the fox ate them.

The present Vietnam settlement could collapse even before it is signed. Yet the saboteurs would never be sure that the result would tangibly benefit them.