TOWARD SUBSTANCE AT THE PEACE TABLE

IN the wake of President Richard Nixon's Viet Nam speech, the U.S. and North Viet Nam last week edged cautiously toward substance in the Paris peace talks. The movement, as usual, appeared tortuously slow. That was in part a measure of the distance that still separates the participants, but more important, it was a sign that each side has yet to render a final verdict on the other's proposal. After last week's session in the old Hotel Majestic, North Viet Nam's chief delegate, Xuan Thuy, left Paris for his first visit home since the talks began--doubtless to receive fresh instructions. Even so, both sides have already arrived at closer agreement on the principles of a settlement than they publicly acknowledge.

On the matter of troop withdrawals, Hanoi has privately agreed to President Nixon's insistence on simultaneous mutual pullouts. The North Vietnamese insist, however, on maintaining the fiction of victory. While continuing to demand unilateral U.S. withdrawal, they would simply negotiate their own private "unilateral" pull-out with South Viet Nam--which would just happen to correspond with the U.S. schedule. On the issue of interim authority in the South, the major stumbling block, the U.S. has given up its demand that elections for a permanent government be controlled by the present Saigon regime. That, to be sure, is still a long way from agreeing to Hanoi's demand for a coalition government that would include Communists, but the U.S. has not even ruled out that possibility, in the dubious event that the South Vietnamese government would agree to it.

Common Ground. What remained undefined were the modalities in Paris: how to get Hanoi and the National Liberation Front to begin discussing a withdrawal schedule, how to persuade Saigon to talk of compromising on election particulars. U.S. Negotiator Henry Cabot Lodge, however, remained de termined to push the talks off dead center. "We have reached a stage in these negotiations where the issues have become clear, and we can now get down to serious discussion of them in specific detail," he declared. Lodge thereupon named five specific issues--ranging from agreements on Laos and Cambodia to release of prisoners--where "sufficient common ground" exists to begin negotiating. After warming up on these peripheral subjects, he then broached the more basic issues of troop withdrawals and political settlement.

On the surface, at least, his persistence brought the forms of peace no closer. North Vietnamese Spokesman Nguyen Thanh Le said that the two positions remained "as different as night from day." Still, U.S. negotiators noted that the session remained refreshingly free of propaganda blasts, and Lodge himself left convinced that "a basis now exists for productive discussions."

Raft of Qualifiers. How the war ends will inevitably affect U.S. policy elsewhere in Asia. Speaking at the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization meeting last week, U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers assured the six other delegations seated in Bangkok's Santi Maitri building that the U.S. still believes that human progress in Asia depends on a "prevailing sense of security," and would remain a loyal member of SEATO. But he also served notice that there are "limits to the commitments that the U.S. can undertake." The urgent claims on its resources, said Rogers, must be "balanced and compromised and reconciled."

The raft of qualifiers brought far less dismay to SEATO members than it might have several years ago. Southeast Asia's leaders are increasingly determined to deal by themselves with the Communist insurgency that besets most. Philippine Foreign Secretary Carlos Romulo put the matter gently when he said that most Asians would prefer from the U.S. "a pledge rather than a presence, a commitment rather than an accomplishment." Added Romulo: "For many reasons, it is not desirable for foreign armies to dot our landscape."

Running Alongside. The first hard evidence of new U.S.-Asian cooperation, ironically, will likely be the demise of SEATO. Nixon is on record as having somewhat redundantly called the organization "an anachronistic relic," and a majority of Asian leaders agree that cold war-style mutual security treaties are no longer in their countries' best interest. Until the dimensions of peace are clear, however, the Administration is committed to the SEATO framework, and U.S. allies clearly find patience a wiser course than complete independence. One of them, in explaining Asia's mood to Rogers, compared it to learning to ride a bicycle. "You never know whether you can do it until the man running alongside you takes his hands off," he said. "We think we can do it, but we wish just the same that you would run alongside us for a while."

Of all the Asians that Rogers talked to, none face quite the same perils of bicycling on their own that South Viet Nam's Nguyen Van Thieu must encounter. Last week, perhaps more to show the world that Nixon is still alongside him than anything else, Thieu requested and got an agreement on a summit meeting between himself and the U.S. President. It was scheduled for June 8 on the U.S. Pacific island of Midway. Thieu placed strong pressure on Nixon for a face-to-face meeting as proof that the President's speech did not mean to undercut U.S. support for his regime as South Viet Nam's legitimate government. That support is vital to Thieu in the face of continued Communist insistence that the "Thieu-Ky clique" must go before any settlement of the long war is possible.

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