25. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to President Carter1
SUBJECT
- NSC Weekly Report #64
[Omitted here is information unrelated to Indochina.]
3. Alerts
Vietnamese Initiative
As Cy noted in his evening report recently,2 the Vietnamese are signalling an interest in advancing rapidly their relations with us. They will be sending a group of experts to visit our MIA Identification Laboratory in Hawaii during the week of July 5–10. They have also hinted at a desire to renew contact with Dick Holbrooke to resume discussions on normalization. They will seek to involve you directly or indirectly in Congressman Montgomery’s likely visit to Hanoi in late fall. While accepting the MIA visit, we should restrain ourselves from responding to Vietnamese initiatives for two reasons: (1) the domestic political reaction would be quite negative; (2) given current [Page 91] Chinese-Vietnamese animosities, efforts to improve relations with Vietnam, which would strengthen Hanoi’s international position, could adversely affect our efforts to elicit some flexibility from Peking.3
[Omitted here is information unrelated to Indochina.]
- Source: Carter Library, Brzezinski Donated Material, Subject File, Box 41, Weekly Report (to the President), 61–71: (6/78–9/78). Secret. Carter initialed the top of the memorandum.↩
- Not further identified.↩
- Carter wrote in the left-hand margin adjacent to this paragraph, “Do not send a negative signal. Just delay.”↩