VIET NAM: Exit the General

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In a salt-and-pepper suit and bright green tie, General Nguyen Van Hinh, head of the Vietnamese army, flew to Paris to interview his chief of state, Bao Dai. The 39-year-old general was loudly confident that he could undermine his arch rival, the Nationalist Premier Ngo Dinh Diem, whose efforts he had been successfully frustrating back home.

Bao Dai, however, was now angling for U.S. support, and the U.S.'s man is Diem. The State Department considers Hinh a competent soldier but no man to run the country. Besides, Hinh's French training and his French wife hamper his effectiveness with Vietnamese National ists. Last week Bao Dai fired the general. Or, as Bao Dai's spokesmen put it: "General Hinh having made some regrettable statements, His Majesty . . . came under the imperious obligation of withdrawing his assignment."