The ICC: An Extinct Species Reborn

WITNESSING the rebirth of an International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICC) for Viet Nam is rather like seeing an extinct species spring magically back to life. Soon after the old ICC--which still exists, in vestigial form--was created by the Geneva agreements in 1954, it settled down into a routine of quarrelsome impotence. Lacking any mutually acceptable alternative, Washington and Hanoi seemed determined to try again with a peace-keeping mechanism that has a proven history of failure.

If numbers, props and pledges count, however, the new ICC team that began to arrive in Saigon over the weekend should have a better chance than the old one. The Geneva commission, which fluctuated anywhere from a few score to several hundred members scattered in as many as 14 locations, had virtually no means of transportation and precious little cooperation. South Viet Nam did not sign the Geneva agreements, and therefore claimed it was exempt from ICC control --North Viet Nam did sign them but was no more helpful. The new commission will have 1,160 members located at 55 trouble spots across South Viet Nam, American helicopters in which to fly about, and the pledged cooperation of all four parties to the agreement.

The peace-keeping machinery backing up the new ICC is also far more elaborate than that set up by the Geneva agreements. For the first 60 days of the ceasefire, a 3,000-man military commission, composed of representatives from all four signatories to the treaty, will be deployed across the country, ready to deter and detect violations and to act as a forum for settling differences. The ICC will report any infractions it discovers to the commission, and vice versa. After 60 days, the U.S. and North Viet Nam will withdraw from the four-party commission, leaving a permanent military commission made up equally of South Vietnamese and Provisional Revolutionary Government representatives. No later than 30 days from the ceasefire, an international conference will convene--the site has yet to be chosen--to acknowledge the signing of the Washington-Hanoi agreement, guarantee the ending of the war and set up some kind of permanent international body to whom the ICC can report any and all infractions, so that, as Henry Kissinger put it, the ICC "is not only reporting to the parties that it is investigating." ; One troublesome proviso from the old ICC charter, however, seems to remain. In the Geneva agreements, reports of any infractions had to be unanimous. Since the ICC was made up of one pro-South Vietnamese country (Canada), one pro-North Vietnamese country (Poland) and one neutral nation (India), there was almost never any unanimity. The new charter also calls for a unanimous vote in full-fledged reports, and the new commission is also split down the middle: Canada and Indonesia on the right and Poland and Hungary on the left. But the ICC protocol allows individual members to make their own reports in the absence of full ICC accord.

Still, there is confusion. Several of the Canadian and Polish members of the old ICC in Saigon have no idea what their future is--or whether they have one. (The Indians were kicked out by Thieu last September, because India raised its diplomatic representative in Hanoi to ambassadorial rank.) "Everything is one big question mark," said a Pole. Precisely because so much has yet to be worked out, and so many bitter memories remain, Canada has agreed to participate in the new ICC only on a provisional basis, reserving the right to back out in 60 days if it encounters the same old problems.

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