Extending a Hand to Hanoi

The Carter Administration early this month made a top-secret approach to Hanoi to determine whether Viet Nam would receive an American peace mission to discuss the reconciliation of the two countries. The diplomatic feeler, TIME has learned, was ordered by the White House and carried out by the State Department through contacts between the U.S. and Vietnamese embassies in Paris.

The Paris initiative was the clearest sign yet of President Jimmy Carter's determination to carry out a campaign promise to send such a mission to Hanoi. Carter reiterated that pledge in January at a confidential meeting with seven U.S. Congressmen. On that occasion, Carter mentioned U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young or veteran Envoy Averell Harriman as possible heads of the peace team. But he emphasized that he will direct the course of any negotiations personally from the White House.

Relations between the U.S. and Viet Nam have been virtually frozen since South Viet Nam fell to the North in April 1975. In the United Nations, the U.S. cast five vetoes to prevent Viet Nam from being admitted to membership. Washington also demanded a "full accounting" of American M.I.A.s--the 728 servicemen and 25 civilians still listed as missing in action--before any other issues between the two countries are discussed. For its part, Hanoi has taken the position that any accounting must be a part of an overall settlement that would also include some American gestures of conciliation. Hanoi's principal demand: a whopping $3.25 billion in "reconstruction aid" once promised by President Richard Nixon in a letter to Premier Pham Van Dong.

Hanoi will not get that aid--at least not that much and not right away--and the Vietnamese now indicate the demand is negotiable. Washington, in turn, seems almost ready to accept the fact that the fate of most of the M.I.A.s will never be known. Beyond lowering its voice about the M.I.A.s, the U.S. will almost certainly refrain from blocking a new attempt to seat Hanoi in the U.N. Another early move could be to drop the existing trade embargo against Viet Nam, a measure passed by Congress last year but vetoed by Ford.

There is no doubt that what Hanoi wants most from the West is economic help, whether it comes in the form of aid or trade. Despite the $23 billion in assistance poured into South Viet Nam between 1950 and 1974, the newly united country remains, according to one top analyst, among the 25 poorest nations in the world. Its rich mineral resources, including oil, are largely untapped. In the wake of war, agriculture is a shambles. Viet Nam's foreign trade, mostly with the Soviet Union and Japan, ran a disastrous $570 million deficit last year.

Resumption of trade--and later, U.S. diplomatic recognition--could accomplish even more than an aid program in helping Hanoi. The country is drawing up a sophisticated foreign investment code that would allow production-sharing agreements on natural resources, including oil, and up to 49% capitalist participation in other enterprises. Moreover, a group of visiting Japanese oil prospectors has been given the curious news that petroleum development was reserved for "the American sector." Observes one U.S. banker: "All the signals are there. They want to get back into the ball game, and the U.S. is the key to that."

*Another possible chief of the mission being urged on Carter by top advisers: former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. One proposed--and logical--member of the mission is Congressman G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery, chairman of the now defunct House M.I.A. committee.

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