Direct U.S.-Hanoi Contact Admitted

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 11

Direct U.S.-Hanoi Contact Admitted

(NZ.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) WASHINGTON, Jan. 11. Direct contact between the United States and North Vietnam failed to show a positive Communist response to President Johnson’s peace offensive, informed sources reported today.

But the United States did not feel that its bid for a peaceful settlement had failed or should be ended, they said.

The contact was disclosed by the White House last night. Some observers saw a ray of hope in the fact that the two sides came together directly for the first announced time since President Johnson sent peace envoys around the world during the Christmas truce in Vietnam.

It was noted in these quarters that Washington had given the first indication that the Administration’s search for peace had met anything except hostile reaction from Hanoi.

Others, however, believed that the contact—which the White House refused to describe or discuss beyond saying it had taken place—meant only that the Administration had taken its drive even further than in the past in an attempt to bring Hanoi to the conference table. The disclosure that there may have been a direct meeting came at a White House news briefing by the press secretary, Mr Bill Moyers. Sources said that an American diplomat held a brief meeting with a Hanoi official and handed him a message concerning the United States offer to hold unconditional discussions on the Vietnam war. Sharp Contrast

The Communist official accepted the message, an act which contrasted sharply with Hanoi’s refusal to receive another message transmitted through the British Government last May. For its own part, the Administration would not say on the record where the contact had been made or whether there had been any fruitful results. There was talk that it might have taken place when Mr Arthur Goldberg, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, visited Paris as a peace envoy during the Christmas lull, or when Mr Averell Harriman, Ambassador at large, flew to Warsaw on the same mission for the President.

The direct meeting between the United States and Hanoi officials was in line with President Johnson’s refusal to accept critical reaction from Communist capitals as proof that American moves towards peace talks had received final rejection.