751G.00/12–953: Telegram
The Ambassador at Saigon (Heath) to the Department of State
987. Repeated information Paris 285, Hanoi unnumbered. General Navarre told me today that he spent week-end with Bao Dai at Banmethuot and found HM rather discouraged. He had done his best, with some success, to improve Bao Dai’s morale but told Bao Dai very bluntly that, while he could count on French troops fighting with their present spirit and success in immediate future, Bao Dai must not delay in negotiating terms of future Franco-Vietnamese association. He said to Bao Dai that everybody in Vietnam seemed to take it for granted that basic accords that Vietnam signed with French in 1949 were obsolete, but nothing was being done on Vietnamese side to negotiate new ones. It should be easily possible to arrive at some new basis acceptable to France and Vietnam. If things continued as they were, they were bound to have some eventual deleterious effect on French troop morale. French soldier was willing to fight and die, but he wanted to see a very definite French interest involved. Bao Dai reportedly replied that he could hardly begin negotiations until after French presidential elections, to which Navarre replied that that simply meant more delay.