Not a Single Millimeter

Laundry service was erratic, and the gasoline shortage made it difficult even for diplomats to get around Paris on unofficial business. Otherwise, France's internal crisis has had little effect on the U.S. and North Vietnamese peace negotiators. If the situation had grown worse, the U.S. favored Stockholm or Geneva as alternate sites, but for the time being, the talks on ending the Viet Nam war will go on in Paris.

And on and on, from the look of things. "We did not progress a single millimeter," said a North Vietnamese spokesman after two sessions that consumed seven hours and 50 minutes last week. Nor is the appointment of hard-lining Le Duc Tho, a member of Hanoi's Politburo who is due in Paris this week as an "adviser" on the talks, expected to do much to break the impasse.

Fantasy & Propaganda. During last week's sessions, Hanoi's chief delegate, Xuan Thuy once again rejected as "absurd" the U.S. demand for a reciprocal move in the wake of Washington's limited bombing pause, and he refused to broaden the discussions until the air raids end. If the U.S. insists on reciprocity, he suggested sarcastically, the North Vietnamese might reply by issuing a statement that Hanoi "commits itself from now on, as in the past, to refrain from bombing and all other acts of war on the entire territory of the U.S." Thuy inched a little closer to admitting that North Vietnamese troops are fighting in the South, but still refused to come right out and say so. Chief U.S. Negotiator Averell Harriman in turn handed Thuy a report charging that Hanoi had decided as early as May 1959 to launch a military offensive against the Saigon regime. Since 1964, the document added, Hanoi has sent more than 200,000 men into the South, now has at least 85,000 there. Until the North Vietnamese ad mit their presence, said Harriman, "meaningful and frank discussions" are impossible.

The deadlock was plainly beginning to irritate Lyndon Johnson, who is coming under increasing pressure to resume all-out bombing. After Deputy U.S. Negotiator Cyrus R. Vance flew back from Paris to brief the President on the talks, Johnson jabbed at Hanoi. "It is time," he told an impromptu White House news conference, "to move from fantasy and propaganda to the realistic and constructive work of bringing peace to Southeast Asia." So far, he declared, the North's only response to his bombing curtailment has been to pour in men and supplies "at an unpreccdented rate." Nonetheless, two clays later during a press conference at the L.B.J. Ranch with Australia's Prime Minister John Gorton on hand, the President reiterated that "if Hanoi will take responsive action" to reduce the level of violence, "we are ready to go far and fast with them, and with others, to reduce the violence and to build a stable peace in Southeast Asia."

Desperation & Deterioration. In fact, the level of violence on both sides has risen steadily since the talks began. A week before the negotiators met in Paris, the U.S. command in Saigon issued a directive urging field officers to go "all out" to hit the enemy. The Communists, similarly, stepped up their attacks and increased the rate of infiltration; U.S. reconnaissance pilots (see THE WORLD) report sighting 100-truck convoys in areas of Laos and North Viet Nam's southern panhandle where ten trucks once constituted a big catch.

Despite the intensified fighting. General William Westmoreland, who will yield his command of U.S. forces in Viet Nam next month to become Army Chief of Staff, offered a characteristically optimistic assessment of the war during a visit to the L.B.J. Ranch. The enemy "seems to be approaching a point of desecration," he told the President, and his forces "are deteriorating in strength and quality." Though hard fighting looms in northernmost I Corps, the Central Highlands and around Saigon, added Westy, "time is on our side." That, clearly, is what Hanoi believes--about its side.

*Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma of Laos was less reticent. He accused Hanoi of turning his country "into an active transit route for North Vietnamese troops going to South Viet Nam," and added that there were at least 40,000 fighting men from North Viet Nam permanently stationed in Laos.

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