U.S.-SAIGON ‘TENSIONS’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30961, 18 January 1966, Page 11

U.S.-SAIGON ‘TENSIONS’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SAIGON, Jan. 17. Diplomats do not believe yesterday’s United States-South Vietnamese communique fully reflected the tensions between the two Governments that have grown out of President Johnson’s “peace offensive,” the “New York Times” news service reported.

The communique said, for example, that the South Vietnamese Premier, General Nguyen Cao Ky and the United States Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, had agreed “that the basic positions of the two Governments were consistent in all fundamental respects.”

It carefully avoided saying that the positions were the same because they are not. An official said last night that the communique—and Mr Rusk’s visit itself—had been "a carefully planned exercise in reassuring the South Vietnamese.” “It seems difficult to believe,” the official said, “but people here are still not wholly convinced that the U.S. is with them.” Report On Lodge Another official said the United States Ambassador. Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, had told Washington that something must be done to disabuse

Saigon of the idea that the President’s peace efforts were being taken without consideration of the South Vietnamese point of view. The communique was clearly written to be interpreted in one way in South Vietnam and in an entirely different way in the rest of the world.

It spoke of the need for a continuation of “all necessary military measures,” and it emphasised the South Vietnamese insistence that North Vietnamese aggression be halted before any peace talks were undertaken. As Reassurance “All of this,” an. American diplomat said, “was done to reassure a country with 700.000 men under arms that the Ky Government is not going to negotiate away the country, and to persuade them that it is worth while to continue their struggle.” The U.S., for diplomatic as well as domestic political reasons, is far more eager than the South Vietnamese to press for a negotiated truce in the war.