Bringing Pressure on Hanoi

PRESIDENTIAL Adviser Henry Kissinger flew back to Washington at week's end from a four-day visit to Peking, his fourth in less than a year. His return brought to an end, for the moment at least, a flurry of activity by top-level American, Chinese and Soviet officials that appeared to be focused on Viet Nam.

The exact nature of Kissinger's talks with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai was not yet known. But clearly from the kind of treatment Kissinger received, the Chinese considered the visit highly important. Kissinger was installed in the state guest house at Jade Abyss Pool Park in Peking, and between meetings with Premier Chou Enlai, treated to a lavish banquet in the Great Hall of the People. The People's Daily prominently displayed a group photograph of Kissinger, Chou and their top aides.

Kissinger reported frequently to President Nixon, using special communications gear aboard the presidential 707 that had brought him to Peking. Kissinger discussed the Moscow summit with the Chinese, along with his own recent trip to Japan, and is said to have assured them that at neither meeting was any agreement made that interfered with China's national interests. Presumably he also discussed recent agreements between Moscow and Washington, including the SALT accord. But the principal subject of the talks--and the reason that had brought Kissinger to Peking--was Viet Nam and a U.S. request that the Chinese help Washington get the long-stalled peace talks going on a realistic new footing.

The Chinese were prepared to lend a hand within limits. Indeed, they are believed to have urged such negotiations when Le Due Tho, Hanoi's chief delegate to the Paris peace talks, visited Peking a few days earlier. The Chinese have made it clear in private that they disapprove of Hanoi's current offensive--and of the conventional-type warfare that the North Vietnamese have been waging with Soviet weaponry. Thus they have recently provided only military aid to Hanoi and have closed their harbors to Soviet ships bearing supplies for North Viet Nam.

Mission of Persuasion. Nonetheless, Chou recently declared that China must not repeat the "mistakes" of the 1954 Geneva Conference, which partitioned Viet Nam--meaning that Peking will not directly pressure Hanoi into an agreement. Presumably out of respect for North Vietnamese feelings, the People's Daily published an anti-U.S. editorial on the eve of Kissinger's visit.

Only a few days earlier, Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny visited Hanoi, apparently also on a mission of persuasion. Podgorny had to explain first the Soviet Union's refusal or inability to try to lift the U.S. blockade of North Vietnamese ports. Ten Soviet ships are bottled up in Haiphong harbor; and though the Russians have nine minesweepers in nearby waters, they realize that the U.S. could lay mines far faster than the minesweepers can clear them. Just how persuasive he was on Viet Nam was not entirely clear. During a stopover at Calcutta airport on his way home, Podgorny, sporting a new mustache, claimed that "everything went as I wanted" in Hanoi and promised that the Paris peace talks would be resumed "soon." Back in Moscow, however, the Soviet government said merely that the talks were marked by "frankness, friendship and comradeship"--which, in Communist jargon, usually means stark disagreement.

In effect, Hanoi was under pressure from all three major powers. The Soviet Union and China have apparently concluded that their national interests would be best served by an end to the Indochina war, since that would remove the major irritant to their relations with the U.S. During the Peking and Moscow summits, Nixon evidently persuaded them that the U.S. is genuinely anxious to withdraw its troops. They are also convinced that in the long run the Communists of the North will come to dominate all of Viet Nam anyway. By receiving Nixon, both made it evident that they accord their relations with the U.S. a higher priority than providing full-scale assistance to North Viet Nam --though probably not to the extent of forcing Hanoi to settle the war on U.S. terms.

Was the diplomatic offensive having any effect? For several days last week, the North Vietnamese Politburo was in almost constant session. A number of key ambassadors abroad had also been summoned home for the meetings. But there was no evidence that the North Vietnamese were yielding to the great power pressure. In Paris, Hanoi's delegation went through the ritual of asking the U.S. to resume the weekly talks, although earlier they had insisted that the U.S. would have to ask for future meetings. But they gave no indication whatever of a softening in their terms.

Quite the contrary. Late in the week, the delegation invited some 50 Western newsmen to the North Vietnamese villa in suburban Choisy-le-Roi for tea. Their chief spokesman, Nguyen Than Le, rejected a suggestion that Nixon's May 8 proposals--for an immediate ceasefire, release of American prisoners of war and withdrawal within four months--had brought the two sides any closer together. "Our positions," said Le, "are as different as night and day." As for the Kissinger and Podgorny trips, Le merely repeated the standard cliche that any diplomatic effort to solve the problem "without speaking directly with the representatives of the people of Viet Nam" was "bound to fail."

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