Nation: THE SECOND PHASE IN PARIS

RICHARD NIXON'S top priority will, of course, be Viet Nam—at least in the foreseeable future. Though he could only welcome Saigon's agreement last week to attend the Paris talks, hardly anyone in Washington believes that any substantive moves toward peace will be made before the next President takes office. At best, the negotiators in Paris may have settled what they call the "modalities": such inconsequential but emotion-charged issues as seating arrangements, speaking order, briefing rules, and myriad other details.

Saigon's announcement that it would send a delegation to Paris came nearly four weeks after Lyndon Johnson announced that he was extending his limited bombing halt to cover all of North Viet Nam. U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker waited a week for South Viet namese tempers to cool—and for the American elections to end. Then he went to work to persuade President Nguyen Van Thieu to agree to send a delegation to Paris. So strained were the sessions that Deputy U.S. Ambassador Samuel Berger, who had been particularly unreceptive to Saigon's demands during earlier talks, had to be packed off to Hawaii. Thieu, under pressure from hard-liners within his own government, wanted guarantees that there would be no recognition in Paris of the Viet Cong and no attempt to impose a coalition regime on Saigon. A break in the impasse finally came on Nov. 9, during a 90-minute meeting at which Bunker suggested that a U.S. statement be prepared offering assurances to Thieu. In the ensuing 2½ weeks, the U.S. statement went through seven drafts before it satisfied Thieu. The final 750-word statement offered explicit assurances to Saigon that Washington: > Does not recognize the National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong's political agency, even though the N.L.F. will attend the talks. "We will regard all the persons on the other side of the table as members of a single side, that of Hanoi," said the statement.

> Will not give in to Hanoi's demands for enforced Viet Cong representation in any government of South Viet Nam. "The U.S.," said the statement, "will not recognize any government that is not freely chosen through democratic and legal process by the people of South

Viet Nam. The imposition of any coalition government would be in conflict with this principle."

> Expects Saigon to "take the lead and be the main spokesman on all matters which are of principal concern to South Viet Nam." In such matters of "hard ware" as troop withdrawals and a ceasefire, the U.S. will continue to speak for the allies.

Washington anticipates trouble from Hanoi, particularly over nonrecognition of the N.F.L. But as one official put it, the U.S. does not expect the North Vietnamese to press the matter to the point of "diplomatic divorce."