0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
summits in Peking and Moscow,
Hanoi
President Nixon signalled the following to
6 increased communist aggression would be countered swiftly
0 the US was ready to sign an agreement to end the war before the
next dry season (after the dry season and US elections, US terms
would harden)
* Hanoi's allies (USSR & PRC) saw the benefits of Getente so they
were no longer willing to risk it for the sake of the DRV's
struggle. 130/
A presidential aide uDserved at the time that, "it
was the first time in
the entire war that our use of force against Hanoi and our diplomacy with
the Soviets and Chinese were coordinated solely for its effect r the
negotiations, The P,-esident no longer wanted to win the war, he wanted to
end it."131/
The "detente" diplomacy which met with success in
Peking and Moscow had little effect on Hanoi.., On May 2, 1972, (the day
before the northern-most province of RVN fell to the PAVN), Mr. Kissinger
met secretly wit) Le Duc Tho for the thirteenth time. The loss of Quang
Tri was a major test of Vietnamization and at that time was a major defeat
for Saigon.
It could not have come at a worse time in the negotiat'lons;" if
anything, it 5uggested to the DRV that Quang Tri might have beeo to the US
in 1972 what Dien Bien Phu had been to the French in 1954. 132/
days later, on 4 May,
The secret talks with Le Duc Tho again got nowhere. Two
the plenary sessions of the public Paris talks were
suspended because of a complete lack of progress on all channels, A week
later, President Nixon announced to the nation that the secret talks hdd
broken down,
and that he had ordered Haiphong Harbor to be mined along with
other bcmbing and interdiction measures to be taken against the DRV.
Nixon
added that those measures would remain in effect until the day a Paris
Agreement was signed, What the US sought, he said, was an internationally
supervised "cease-fire in-place" throughout Indochina plus a POW exchange.
He emphk-sized that after those terms were accepted by the DRV, US forces
would begin their final withdrawal and complete it within four morths..133/
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