Editorial Note
At 8:30 a.m. on June 23, in Washington, Under Secretary Smith conducted a briefing on the Geneva Conference for the President and a bipartisan Congressional delegation of 13 Senators and 17 Representatives, including the Congressional leadership of both parties. He said the United States position toward the Indochina phase of the Conference was different from that toward the Korean phase. The [Page 1224] United States was not a principal or a belligerent and therefore had to remain aloof and be somewhat restrained. He said that Secretary of State Dulles “a long time ago had told Bidault that if Indochina were put on the Geneva agenda, violent communist fighting would break out in Indochina. This had happened.” Smith said that the United Kingdom “had been anxious to play a major role at Geneva as a peace maker, carrying the Asian members of the Commonwealth along, but not involving commitment of British forces.”
Under Secretary Smith indicated that “during the Geneva Conference, the decline in morale and effectiveness of the Vietnamese army and the fall of the Laniel Government in France had compelled the US to re-evaluate its position.” He said that the “original US position was that enemy forces should be evacuated from Laos and Cambodia, because they had been invaded and should be treated differently from Vietnam, which was in a state of civil war; that whatever fair settlement was arrived at for Vietnam, we wanted an impartial and effective International Supervisory Commission, and not one with two built-in Communist vetoes. These positions became the central issues of the Indochina phase. On the latter issue, when the British finally proposed the International Advisory Commission, to be composed of the Colombo Powers and the Soviets rejected this proposal, the Soviets incurred Asian ill-will.”
Smith summarized the developments at Geneva and indicated that throughout the United States had “continued to hold to its basic views, but as the US is not a principal or a belligerent, it has not the power to determine the decision.”
Smith predicted a “continuance
of French political weakness, a continuance of UK desire to avoid conflict in the Far
East, a continuance of the Communist firmness of position, and a
belief that the Communists would probably move to the following
position, which the French, UK, and
Associated States would accept:
For the complete text of Smith’s remarks and those of the Secretary of State who was also in attendance, see memorandum by the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Cutler), June 23, volume XIII.