751G.00/12–753: Telegram
The Ambassador at Saigon (Heath) to the Department of State
978. Repeated information Paris 281. Radio Dalat editorial December 5 (full text transmitted FBIS SO 71000) apparently constitutes Bao Dai’s reply to Ho Chi-Minh démarche in Swedish paper Expressen November 29. Editorial on whole takes reasonable position, leaving way open for bona fide negotiations among Vietnamese but condemning Ho declaration as pure propaganda and reissuing open invitation to Nationalists to rejoin national cause. Dalat output does not go so far as coldly logical demand that Viet Minh lay down arms and recognize legal government but it is properly skeptical of Ho interview stressing non-Vietnamese tone of statements and castigating entire move as one more verbal weapon in Communist campaign to split Western Powers and prevent ratification of EDC. Editorial also mentions clear-sighted American appraisal of international character of IC conflict and refusal see Vietnam become Chinese satellite.
Lack of realism and wishful thinking of majority Vietnamese, including generally astute Bao Dai, show through, however, in phrases such as following: “A conflict of that nature (civil war) does not end by extermination of one side but by settlement which freezes military positions of both camps or by new political arrangement”; “USSR is in phase of internal rebuilding, if not of weakness, and … in world this country seeks more to limit its engagements than to hurry its expansionist march”; and “there is very little chance that Peking will intervene openly in IC conflict”. Editorial also states it not impossible USSR will abandon Viet Minh as it abandoned Greek Communists; this statement itself is possibly reasonable, but to compare 30,000 Markos Greeks with 300,000 armed Viet Minh is obviously not. Viet Minh would be formidable enemy for sometime after cessation Russian aid.
Journal d’Extreme Orient printed significant quotations on front page with headline “Nothing is Impossible”, giving clear implication way was open for “reconciliation”.