396.1 GE/2–2354: Telegram
The Ambassador at Saigon (Heath) to the Department of State
1517. Sent Hanoi 234, repeated information Phnom Penh, Vientiane unnumbered. We have endeavored to ascertain initial reactions in Vietnamese Government to communiqué from Berlin1 announcing five-power conference on Korea and possibility of a later conference on settlement of war in Indochina. Opinions of Governors, Ministers range full width of spectrum from deep despair to qualified hope.
Minister of Information Le Thang, a Dai Viet from Tonkin, said that he felt once a conference began, it meant not only end of war, but end of Vietnam. He himself and others like him would be immediate target of Viet Minh reprisal, once they took over country following a cease-fire and national elections which would return a popular front government. Only future he saw for himself and his co-workers was to go down fighting.
Similar views were voiced by ex-Prime Minister Tam. He felt that negotiations would in effect amount to eventual political infiltration of this country and result would be loss of what we are now fighting for. However, as a politician long identified with the south, Tam said it might be possible to preserve Cochin China and set it up as an independent state. Presumably Tam had in mind some form of arrangement [Page 1070] similar to Korean armistice whereby north and center Vietnam would be left to Viet Minh and south would retain its independence.
Quat, Minister of National Defense, insisted that at whatever conference might discuss peace in Indochina, it would be untenable if three Associated States were not represented as sovereign entities. (cf. memorandum January 27 by MacArthur reporting Secretary’s conversation with Bidault on this point).
New Minister of Economic Affairs Ty2 was only member of Cabinet with whom we have discussed conference who showed any signs of optimism. He said that people on both sides in this war, Vietnamese and Viet Minh, were heartily weary of eight years of internecine conflict. What everyone wanted was peace. He felt, therefore, that conference would find ready popular support on both sides of lines, but that if armistice and eventual peace were to be guaranteed by Communist China, majority of population in this peninsula would realize they were merely slated for eventual absorption behind an oriental iron curtain a la Czechoslovakia. However, if peace in Indochina were to be underwritten by the US entire population of peninsula whether presently dominated by Viet Minh or not, would with one accord welcome such a conclusion of hostilities. However, Ty warned that guaranties should be from US alone and not combined with any undertaking by French as this would be misconstrued as a veiled attempt to return to old colonial domination. Ty felt very strongly that if US could find its way clear to giving Vietnam a treaty on lines of US Korean defense agreement, it would suffice to bring all of Vietnam successfully out of war and on side of free world.