Nation: THE WAR: Hopeful Half Steps

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AFTER three years of ever more furious combat, after dozens of feints and one-sided gestures toward conciliation, the U.S. and North Viet Nam finally moved in the same direction at the same time. The first half step, when it occurred, was just as swift as it was unforeseen.

It came last week when President Johnson dramatically restricted the U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam without demanding any reciprocal restraint by the Communists. North Viet Nam, in turn, agreed to the first significant face-to-face diplomatic contact with the U.S. since embassy-level talks in Moscow 14 months ago, although its insistence upon an end to all attacks on its territory had not been met. Washington accepted, even though Hanoi limited the initial agenda to the question of a full cessation of U.S. attacks. The entire exchange took just 68 hours. Washington, through embassy channels in Laos, immediately proposed Geneva as the meeting place. North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh, in a Hanoi interview with CBS, suggested Pnompenh, the Cambodian capital, as the site.

Whether these events will loom large in history, or will fade along with all the previous false starts towards peace, may not be known for weeks to come. Not even negotiations on the main issues of the conflict are assured, let alone a successful outcome. On the other hand, said the President, "it could lead to another positive step and another positive step and another positive step that might end this terrible war."

No Cracks. Even the first half step proved difficult for each side. Bombing of the North, particularly around the heavy-population centers, has been a constant impediment to any peace talks —not to say one of the most emotional issues of the war. Between May 1965 and February 1967, the U.S. suspended the bombing—"Operation Rolling Thunder" — five times, the halts ranging in duration from two to 37 days. None of them cracked the diplomatic ice.

Last year the Johnson Administration considered a partial pause—exempting the area north of the 20th parallel from bombardment—but military advice went against it. In subsequent testimony before the Senate's Preparedness Investigation Subcommittee, General Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he and his colleagues had "concluded unanimously that the concept was erroneous." There was no indication that the generals had changed their minds this year, and until recently it looked as if Johnson agreed with them. On Feb. 1, he depicted a grim situation if the U.S. stopped bombing: "The enemy force in the South would be larger. It would be better equipped. The war would be harder. The losses would be greater."