Word: saigon
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MANY U.S. goals in Viet Nam have been scaled down or simply abandoned, but President Nixon has frequently renewed two pledges. One is that Saigon will be given "a reasonable chance" of survival. The other, an emotional issue about which the President has made it clear there can be no compromise, is that the U.S. will fight on until it can recover the 460-odd Americans now held prisoner...
...that simple, of course. In addition to U.S. withdrawal, the Communists reiterated some familiar and, to the Administration, unacceptable demands: that the U.S. cut off all aid to Viet Nam and abandon the "puppet" government in Saigon in favor of a coalition that would include the Communists. In effect, the Communists were saying: If you really want your prisoners so badly, take them, and give us South Viet Nam in exchange...
Hard Probing. To look into the possibility of such negotiations, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger set out at week's end on a "fact-finding" trip that would take him to both Saigon...
There was indeed much hard probing to be done on the Communist offer. On what timetable exactly did the Communists plan to release the prisoners? And would the U.S. have to drop all its plans for helping Saigon with military aid? "If you interpret it literally," said one skeptical Washington official, "then you'd have to take away the weapons we've already given them...
...safety of the prisoners, can't lose sight of our national purposes, and we can't absolutely abandon ransom." our But perhaps national it is no objectives to longer so pay certain to the American public that any "national objective" - particularly maintenance of the present Saigon regime - is more important than getting the prisoners home...