TO PARIS WITH PATIENCE

AT last the preliminaries were over.

This week, in a 40-ft.-square conference room dominated by a 299-year-old Gobelin tapestry that is appropriately atwitter with hawks, doves, swans and other birds, negotiators for the U.S. and North Viet Nam sat down and began to talk. If the preliminaries were any measure, they should be at it for quite some time. Merely choosing a building required five days. "Procedural questions" covering housekeeping details--which doors should be used by which delegations, how many chairs should be around the table--postponed the opening of "substantive" talks for two more days.

Stepped-Up War. All week, both Washington and Hanoi had jockeyed for a favorable position. North Viet Nam's President Ho Chi Minh accused the U.S. of talking about "peace negotiations while stepping up the war," then went ahead and did the same thing. Five days before the talks were to start, Communist forces attacked 122 South Vietnamese cities and military installations, concentrating chiefly on Saigon. But the offensive was markedly punchless, especially by contrast with last winter's Tet strikes (see THE WORLD).

For its part, the U.S. gravely noted that Hanoi had infiltrated as many as 100,000 troops since Tet, nearly three times the normal flow; nearly 7,000 entered the South in the first five days of

May alone. "The President is not about to resume the bombing with the peace talks barely under way," said a White House aide. "But we haven't seen one single act of restraint on their part while we have been restraining ourselves." Said Lyndon Johnson, during a White House dinner for Thailand's Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn, whose country has sent 2,500 troops to fight in Viet Nam and plans to increase that force to 11,500: "I hope that our own people, all of them, and our adversaries as well, will realize that increased infiltration, sending new MIGs to new airfields south of the 20th parallel, will not go unnoticed."

In the face of Hanoi's stepped-up infiltration and its new wave of attacks in the South, the Administration's emphasis on the eve of the talks was on determination as well as patience. "It is quite obvious," said Chief U.S. Negotiator Averell Harriman in a Manhattan speech three days before his departure for Paris, "that patience will be required of the people of the U.S. as well as the negotiators." He added: "Above all, we must have determination and firmness to achieve our fundamental objective." Similarly, in a reference to the Communist attacks in South Viet Nam, U.N. Ambassador-designate George Ball warned Hanoi that "if they think that this kind of military operation is going to result in improving their bargaining position, they gravely misconceive the attitude of the U.S., the power position of the U.S., or the determination of the U.S. to see an honorable settlement."

Cobblestone's Throw. Paris was a jittery city--and not just because of the talks. For a week, up to 30,000 demonstrators, protesting conditions at the Sorbonne and other French universities, clashed with police in the Latin Quarter. Grillwork barricades were hurriedly put up in front of the U.S. embassy, and police were posted at 19 bridges across the Seine from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. Their orders: to keep students from crossing over to the Right Bank and reaching the old Hotel Majestic on the Avenue Kleber, a cobblestone's throw from the Arc de Triomphe.

Now known as the Centre de Conferences Internationales, the Majestic is a grimy six-story stone pile that once served as Paris headquarters for the Gestapo; it was also the site of the 1946 talks between France and Vietnamese nationalists, including Ho Chi Minh.

The U.S. accepted the Majestic as a site for talks immediately, but Hanoi's agents, uncertain whether its waiting-room ambiance was sufficiently dignified, took five days to make up their minds. Even before they assented, the French went ahead with some long-overdue refurbishing--papering the walls, decorating the interior with rubber plants, potted ferns and hydrangeas, laying a red carpet on the seven stone steps leading inside, and hastily covering up the pits that had been dug near by for a new subway extension.

Conference Room No. 5, which the delegates will use after an initial confrontation and picture-taking session in a larger hall, was fitted with booths for simultaneous translation and a table capable of seating more than a score of aides on each side.

Ho's Ha. Hanoi's team arrived in two waves. The first was a 23-member contingent headed by Colonel Ha Van Lau, No. 2 man on North Viet Nam's team, a handsome, Catholic-schooled aristocrat who in 1950 commanded a Viet Minh regiment that killed his own brother, the French-appointed governor of Hue. Ha, now the North Vietnamese army's liaison officer with the International Control Commission, signed the 1954 Geneva agreements as Hanoi's military expert and attended the 1961-62 Laos Conference at which Harriman was the top U.S. negotiator.

Two days later, a 16-member group headed by Chief North Vietnamese Negotiator Xuan Thuy (pronounced Swan Twee) arrived aboard a Soviet Ilyushin 18 jet from Moscow. In addition to platoons of Communist diplomats and beaming French leftists, on hand at Le Bourget to greet Thuy were some 50 pro-Hanoi Vietnamese residents of France.* Few of the Hanoi delegates ventured from their crowded quarters (three beds to a room) at the nondescript Hotel Lutetia, and most of their meals were served in the ballroom.

When Harriman reached Orly five hours after Thuy's arrival, the welcome was more restrained. On hand were only a few French protocol officials, newsmen and the new U.S. ambassador, Sargent Shriver, who was hurriedly sworn in earlier in the week. Where Thuy's arrival statement was characteristically windy and polemical, Harriman's was crisp and noncommittal. His only barb, in fact, was aimed not at the North Vietnamese but at the French. He reminded them that the first Paris conference he attended helped set up the Marshall Plan, "20 years ago almost to the day." Added Harriman: "I have many warm memories of those days, and of the close cooperation we shared with France."

Forest of Papers. Harriman left the wrangling over procedure to his backup man, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, who spent three hours and 45 minutes clearing away the underbrush with Colonel Ha. In the actual talks, Hanoi is immediately expected to demand, in Thuy's words, "the unconditional cessation of the U.S. bombing raids and all other acts of war" against the North before going on to other subjects. The U.S., in turn, is certain to demand some reciprocal gesture from Hanoi, though the Administration's bedrock definition of reciprocity is still in flux. Saigon, for example, wants an international control mechanism to be established to ensure credible verification of any violations if Hanoi agrees to reduce or halt its infiltration in exchange for a bombing halt. In any case, Harriman has reviewed every imaginable contingency with President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. "He has a forest of position papers in his bags on everything," said a U.S. official. "But these are not instructions as such. If I know Ave, he's likely to ignore them as often as he heeds them."

That is a matter of concern to some of Washington's Asian allies, who fear that Harriman and Johnson may give away too much too soon. Reflecting that fear, South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu declared on the eve of the talks: "The Republic of Viet Nam will not yield even a centimeter of land to the Communists, will not form a coalition government with the N.L.F., and will firmly not acknowledge the N.L.F. as an equal political entity to negotiate with us."

Thieu's position, of course, would doom the talks before they started. Nonetheless, Johnson went out of his way during the week to assure Saigon--and other nervous allied capitals such as Seoul and Bangkok--that the U.S. was seeking what Thailand's Thanom called "a genuine peace which is not a facade covering a surrender." In a joint communique after two days of talks with Thanom, the U.S. and Thailand emphasized "their determination that the South Vietnamese people shall not be conquered by aggression and shall enjoy their inherent right to decide their own form of government."

The President and the Prime Minister also declared that Saigon had to be a "full participant in any negotiations designed to bring about a settlement of the conflict." Johnson did not say as much, but implicit in that guarantee is the understanding that the Viet Cong would also eventually have to take part. In fact, two female members of the N.L.F. are already in Paris for a conference of Communist women; two high-ranking men are in Prague awaiting the green light.

$1 Billion Program. Beyond the bombing issue, Hanoi is expected to propose that the two northernmost provinces of South Viet Nam, which include the cities of Hue and Quang Tri, be turned into a buffer zone. That would be a tough proposal for the allies to accept, since it would effectively give Hanoi part of what it sought--and failed to get--in 1954: partition of the country near the 16th parallel instead of the 17th. The U.S. is likely to call for a return to the conditions set forth, and frequently violated, at Geneva in 1954, with emphasis on international guarantees to protect the South from a swift Communist takeover.

Once the talks get past the bombing issue--and there is always a chance that they could founder right there--the French expect them to be extended, perhaps to include Laos and Cambodia as well as Viet Nam. Vietnamese sources in Paris believe that there will be quick agreement on a U.S. bombing halt and a reciprocal gesture by the North. After that, they expect the U.S. to offer a $1 billion rebuilding program to the North while Hanoi agrees in turn to quit using the Demilitarized Zone as a staging area and to halt infiltration. Then will come the thorniest issue of all--the future role of the Viet Cong in the South.

No Limit. That is certain to take considerable time, though there are some officials in Washington who are confident that the talks will not turn into another Panmunjom. They argue that Lyndon Johnson would not have proposed the talks, and renounced a second term, until he was fairly certain that they would yield some results. They also maintain that Moscow might well have encouraged that view, and note that Xuan Thuy is well known as a member of Hanoi's pro-Soviet faction. In any case, Harriman emphasized when asked whether the U.S. had put a time limit on the talks: "None whatsoever." He and Vance, he added, were "both determined to remain for the duration, whatever that may be."

*They are part of a distinct minority. Of the more than 60,000 Vietnamese living in France, only 700 actively support Hanoi, and only 53 signed recently circulated documents affirming their support of the North and of the National Liberation Front. Of the 150 Vietnamese restaurants in Paris, only five are Communist-run, most notably the Tavern of the Green Dragon and Uncle Ho's, a student hangout.

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