The War: Pulling Together

(2 of 4)

Ky spoke with justifiable enthusiasm about his country's new constitution, and presented Johnson with a red-bound copy of the document. "The outstanding fact of the conference," said the U.S. President, "was Premier Ky's presentation to me of a constitution that is really in being." Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who will return to the U.S. next month as Ambassador at Large when Ellsworth Bunker replaces him in Saigon, was unstinting in his praise of the draft. One interesting point, he noted, is that "the legislative branch, under this constitution, has really more authority, relative to the President, than the U.S. Congress has. If the President vetoes a bill, it can pass the bill over his veto by a simple majority, which is a reflection of the fear of dictatorial, arbitrary rule."

An additional token of political progress is that the first village and hamlet elections since 1964 will get under way next week in South Viet Nam. Within six months, national presidential elections will be held.

Whose Perfidy? Just before departing for Washington, Johnson took pains to emphasize that he foresaw no swift end to the war. "I think we have a difficult, serious, long-drawn-out, agonizing problem that we do not yet have the answer for," he said. "It is going to take a lot of extra effort and a good deal more time." The prospects for peace talks, he emphasized, are bleak. In the past two years, the U.S. has made 20 direct contacts with Hanoi. Since January alone, the President has dispatched five notes to Ho Chi Minh with various proposals for talks. Ho ignored the first four, and when he finally deigned to answer the fifth, it was only to reject the offer in terms bristling with truculence.

The Administration had kept the recent exchange a closely guarded secret in order to avoid clogging a channel that could conceivably lead to peace. But while the President and his lieutenants were winging home from Guam, the North Vietnamese decided abruptly to use Ho's reply for propaganda purposes. As U.S. officials see it, Hanoi was probably subjected to strong pressure from Peking to strike a tough stance and reject any peace overtures. The purpose of publicizing Ho's message, said Hanoi, was to expose "to world opinion the stubbornness and perfidy of the U.S. rulers." As it turned out, Hanoi's tactic misfired and only accentuated its own intransigence.

Johnson's most recent message was delivered to North Viet Nam's Moscow embassy on Feb. 8, the first day of the four-day Tet truce in Viet Nam. The President expressed a desire "to arrange for direct talks in a secure setting away from the glare of publicity." Continued Johnson: "I am prepared to order a cessation of bombing against your country and the stopping of further augmentation of U.S. forces in South Viet Nam as soon as I am assured that infiltration into South Viet Nam by land and by sea has stopped."