World: What Went Wrong on the Way to Paris

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THERE was an almost Kiplingesque, never-the-twain-shall-meet quality in the difficulties between South Viet Nam and the U.S. over the Paris peace talks. Most experts seem agreed that genuine misunderstanding was involved and that both sides are sincere in the belief that their version of events is correct.

Yet there remains the uncomfortable thought that both Washington and Saigon may have indulged in deliberate misunderstandings—the U.S. motivated by its desire to talk substantive peace as quickly as possible, South Viet Nam by its reluctance to sit down with the Communists. The episode contains some lessons, for such conflicts will occur again if and when the Paris negotiations start in earnest. TIME State Department Correspondent Jess Cook's analysis of what went wrong:

The first mistake occurred in Washington as long ago as last spring, at about the time the U.S. launched its talks with Hanoi in Paris. This was in the roughing out, based on existing contingency studies, of the our-side-your-side formula, the ingenious if ambiguous design to bring all four parties—the U.S., Saigon, Hanoi and the National Liberation Front—together without raising the issues of legitimacy and status. Although N.L.F. delegates were to share the conference table, South Vietnamese or U.S. recognition of the Front would not be implied. Somehow, even though the Administration had known for years that the representation issue would be the major snag in any negotiations, the formula was treated as supersecret. Washington let it be known that the N.L.F. would have seats at the peace talks, but it failed to specify the terms.

That was an error because Saigon should have been given all possible time to prepare its people for an arrangement that was predictably distasteful.

The second mistake took place in Saigon. In the months before the October breakthrough, the South Vietnamese made no attempt to veto the our-side-your-side formula, but they clung to some corollaries of their own—most important, their contention that they should speak for the allied delegation once talks began. The Americans regarded that as a nostalgic and unrealistic notion, and refused to believe that Saigon meant it. Thus, when the showdown came in October, the South Vietnamese and the Americans suddenly discovered that they had misunderstood each other all along. The U.S. claimed that Saigon had backed out on the bargain at the last minute; the South Vietnamese maintained that they had never agreed to the deal in the first place.

Looking back, it now appears that although Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker may have thought that President Nguyen Van Thieu was firmly pinned down, the Vietnamese leadership had never been completely committed. Thieu may have told Bunker that he favored a bombing-halt communiqué—indeed, the U.S. Embassy sent such verbatim quotes on to Washington—but the deal was never really confirmed. This, in turn, suggests that the Americans may have missed subtle South Vietnamese hints prior to the halt; after all, Saigon never liked to give the American ambassador a flat no on anything. When Thieu finally did on Nov. 1, his veto was all the more unsettling because it seemed so out of character.