THE WAR: Talking Tough in Paris

Until recently, the only place that rivaled Saigon as a U.S. diplomatic hardship post was Paris—if one happened to be assigned to the Viet Nam peace talks. Inside or out of the velvet-curtained ballroom in the former Hotel Majestic, where the sessions are held, American negotiators have had little to do over the past three years beyond eating canapes and trying to keep their tempers while their Communist counterparts gleefully played to the grandstands. "For the first time anyone could remember," says one U.S. delegate, "Foreign Service types in Paris were requesting reassignment to places like Ouagadougou, where at least there was something happening."

But now the talks are coming alive for the first time since last spring, when David K.E. Bruce, then U.S. chief negotiator, upbraided the Communists for insulting Richard Nixon. Since his takeover of the U.S. negotiations four months ago, Ambassador William J. Porter has totally changed the once patient and restrained U.S. style in Paris—not by negotiating, but simply by talking tough. The result has been a verbal offensive that has startled the Communists. It is unlikely that this will bring about any progress, but it has changed the atmosphere and cheered the 19-member U.S. delegation, for whatever that is worth.

139th Session. Last month, Porter shocked the North Vietnamese by announcing a boycott of the negotiations—a ploy that had always been their specialty. When he returned to the Majestic last week, Porter jousted with the Communists for four straight hours. He warned them against trying any "military adventures" in Indochina, adding that the result could only be "the loss of many more lives." The Communist delegates accused him of not "responding positively" to their proposals, but Porter rasped back that Communists made a practice of turning "proposals into ultimatums, and you are in no position to issue ultimatums." At the end of the session, the 139th since the talks began, Porter snapped that "your failure to negotiate here is an established fact."

When the North Vietnamese clammed up over a question in the past, U.S. negotiators usually let the point pass. Porter likes to glare across the green baize table top and say: "Maybe you didn't hear me." He is particularly irked by the manners of one Communist delegate, who ostentatiously leafs through TIME and other U.S. publications as well as the Dow Jones stock averages during some sessions —especially when the news has been bad. Porter plans to make the Communists more responsive by trying to open the talks to the press.

Born in Britain, the deceptively mild-looking Porter has a well-deserved reputation as an earthy and adroit negotiator. But he also went to Paris with a special franchise. His predecessors—Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge, Bruce—all treated the talks seriously, partly because U.S. domestic politics demanded it, and partly because there was still hope that the Communists would negotiate. Porter's quite different mandate is to stop the talks from being used as a Viet Cong soapbox—even if it means being beastly to the Communists.