180. Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State1
1209. CINCPAC for POLAD. I called on Vice President Tho June 18 to congratulate him on success his mission in reaching agreement with Buddhists. He seemed genuinely to appreciate the gesture.
In course of conversation, Tho acknowledged that negotiations had been quite difficult. He denied, however, that Buddhist demands had gone so far as in effect to amount to demand that Buddhism become “established” church Vietnam. (British Ambassador had gotten this impression from his separate talk with Tho.) Vice President said that he thought Buddhists were satisfied with results and that if there were no misunderstandings (malentendus) in implementing agreement, there should be no further trouble. However, he made it clear that he thought there was considerable possibility of misunderstandings. For example, when I said I had been pleased to see that the communique2 provided for continuation of his commission to supervise implementation and asked how this would be accomplished, he said that complaints would be referred to commission and that Minister of Interior (member of commission) had all the means necessary to deal with them, provided he had the necessary support from above. Tho was obviously not sure that he would.
Vice President asked me whether I thought agreements were fair, and I said I thought they were. However, it seemed to me that they should be regarded by government as point of departure, rather than conclusion of a difficult episode. I thought that events since May 8 had left deep and widespread scars and that government had suffered severe loss of support in all important segments of population. Question now was whether government would conclude danger had passed and draw back and tighten up or whether it would move forward with actions to restore lost confidence. This I thought would require not [Page 401] only faithful carrying out of agreement but concessions to other grievances. Unfortunately, I said, such indications as had yet appeared suggested tightening up. Vice President nodded throughout this but limited himself to saying that I “understood the problem well”.
Earlier in the day, I talked to Thuan along much the same lines, only more bluntly. I told him that, in my opinion, President had not only suffered severe loss confidence in Vietnam but also in Washington. I also spelled out for him, as I had not done for Vice President, indications which led me to believe that there was at least strong pressure on the President to tighten up. I mentioned the anomalous meeting at headquarters of Women’s Solidarity Movement on the morning of announcement of agreement at which tape recordings of June 7 resolution3 had been read. I cited news reports in Times of Vietnam June 17 which sought to place “responsibility for hysteria which has been created in past week squarely on shoulders of those who for undisclosed reasons delayed final signing,” and another statement that, although communique states that those supporting Buddhists’ 5 demands will benefit from Presidential clemency, “there is no clear agreement to absolve completely those who provoked the affairs of the last two weeks.” I pointed out also that we had solid evidence that certain elements of security forces were devoting their major attention to activities and movements of Americans rather than VC or Buddhists. Finally I cited specific incident of apparent harassment of American (see separate CAS telegram).4 Thuan asked me what sort of further GVN concessions I had in mind. I replied that it would not be difficult to produce specific suggestions but I thought it would be better if GVN came up with ideas of its own. Specific suggestions from US would, I feared, be tainted in GVN mind. One area which immediately suggested itself, however, was that of justice, viz., bringing long-detained prisoners to trial, etc.
Thuan indicated agreement with my analysis of problem but did not otherwise react.
Unless Department has objection, I shall push along on these lines as I am able to find opportunities to do so.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, SOC 14-1 S VIET Secret; Priority; Limit Distribution. Repeated to CINCPAC.↩
- See Document 178.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 157.↩
- Not found.↩