"New Phase"

SOUTH VIET NAM

As abruptly as he had left, Nguyen Khanh boarded a plane in the resort town of Dalat and flew back to Saigon last week, drove to his office and resumed his work as Premier of South Viet Nam. His arrival passed almost unnoticed; there wasn't even a photographer at the airport. In view of the fact that Khanh had abandoned Saigon amid bloody riots only a week before, it all seemed slightly bewildering. But there was an explanation: U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor had simply put on his toughest pressure to reinstall the little general.

Lingering Anarchy. Taylor, who was to return to the U.S. this week for consultations, had no real alternative. Though the mobs were off the streets, anarchy had lingered in the wake of Khanh's departure. Harvard-educated Acting Premier Nguyen Xuan Oanh (known as Jack Owen) had only been going through the motions of governing, in fact wielded no real authority. The "triumvirate" of Khanh, General Duong Van ("Big") Minh and Defense Minister General Tran Thien Khiem, which supposedly replaced Khanh's junta, was not really working. The students were still restive, and the Buddhists were demanding--successfully, as it turned out--that all of their partisans jailed during the demonstrations be freed.

Aware that all this drifting anarchy could spell the end of the war effort through the rise of a "neutralist" regime, Taylor flew to Dalat to urge Khanh to reassert his already severely damaged authority. Khanh hemmed and hawed, protested to reporters that he was not mentally ill, as had been suggested, but admitted that he did suffer one malady: "I have hemorrhoids." Nevertheless, he finally agreed to return to the capital.

Back in Saigon. Khanh won signed pledges of support from key military commanders, started pasting together still another proposed solution to South Viet Nam's unrest. Unable to reassume the strong-arm role of President that he had overconfidently relegated to himself only last month. Khanh was more than content to go back to his former title of Premier, returning Oanh to his regular post as Deputy Premier. Khanh even shaved off his famed goatee to mark "the start of a 'new' phase."

His new phase sounded almost as confusing as the old. At a press conference, Khanh announced that he would appoint an "advisory council" to select a group of lawyers who would draft a provisional constitution and supervise the convening of a national assembly. The assembly would draw up a new set of laws, and the whole package --constitution and statutes--would be submitted to a referendum in 1965. Khanh would oversee everything in the meantime, with one proviso: if at the end of 60 days "the chief executive still has the confidence of the government, he will go on with his work. Otherwise he will step down." But confidence in South Viet Nam is a singular commodity.

Endless Disunity. The key to whether Khanh survives is, of course, the Buddhist hierarchy, which influences a majority of the populace. And it seemed impossible to satisfy the monks. They wanted more and more concessions. But hardly was one demand met when the Buddhist clergy whipped out another. At week's end, for example, they were clamoring for the head of the national police chief, who they said should be fired for having arrested Buddhists during the riots. Saigon's head monk, Thich Tarn Chau, handed the government his umpteenth ultimatum: If all Buddhist grievances were not resolved by Oct. 27, the religious community would call a general strike. What were the grievances? Said Chau, with deliberate vagueness: "Provocations and oppressions." Announced one influential monk, with his usual beatific smile: "Not a single Buddhist is satisfied." Out went the word to the bonzes: Begin a 48-hour period of prayer. Yet Khanh, by striving to placate the Buddhists, had aroused alarmed rumblings from Catholics, who charged that the Buddhists were using him to take over the country.

As for the war, the Viet Cong for the most part lay low, taking full advantage of the chaos. The way things were going last week, they really did not need to keep fighting; South Viet Nam seemed to be paralyzed by its own endless disunity.

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