Word: saigon
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While preparing for a final negotiating session, Hanoi was at pains to assure its unhappy ally, the National Liberation Front, that it had not sacrificed too many of the Front's longtime goals: insistence upon a coalition regime in Saigon, for example, and the removal of Thieu. The U.S., on the other hand, was still hoping that Hanoi would make further, more specific concessions on several key points. Among them: that a cease-fire in South Viet Nam be followed quickly by one in Laos and Cambodia, and that the North Vietnamese commit themselves to the withdrawal of troops from...
...accord and at the same time to rally his people in preparation for a ceasefire. Last Sunday, despite a ban on public demonstrations, his government permitted (and stage-managed) the largest political rally the capital has seen in six years. More than 10,000 Vietnamese Catholics marched to the Saigon city hall to register their support of Thieu and their opposition to the settlement...
...Saigon, Thieu was busily positioning himself as an independent patriot. The nine points? He damned the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord that is provided in the Kissinger plan to organize new elections as "a disguised coalition" with the Communists. A ceasefire? Thieu insisted that first Hanoi would have to pull all of the estimated 145,000 troops it has in the South back to North Viet...
...Communists apparently never expect to hold the towns for long. One of their objectives is to keep Saigon's forces off balance and tied down while other North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units increase the pressure on Saigon itself and other key areas. A second aim is to undermine the villagers' confidence in their government and Vietnamization. But the tactics will also pay spot dividends on any given day that a ceasefire is declared, since the Washington-Hanoi agreement says that whoever holds a piece of land on the day the cease-fire commences gets to keep...
...fresh outburst of action has had clear effects. Not since 1968 have so many Communist troops been dug in so close to Saigon. Small-unit attacks are now coming from a 270° arc around the capital, and they draw closer every day. Reports TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand: "Watching the action on Highway 13 to the north of Saigon is like watching mortar rounds being walked in on a position. Each day, when one drives up the highway through the flat open rice fields, progress is stopped closer to Saigon." The going on Route 1 is just as tough...