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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 1. 28th February 1973

No Return to 1954 Position

No Return to 1954 Position

Some commentators have argued that the present Vietnam Peace Agreement will mean the same as the 1954 Geneva Agreements. An article in Socialist Action on the Agreement (condensed from two articles in the American Militant claimed that "Whatever happens next in Vietnam, these accords will not bring peace any more than the 1954 Geneva accords did". Such assertions fail to recognise the sources of the present agreement and the crucial differences between the present political and military situation in Vietnam and that of 1954.

In July 1971 the Foreign Minister of the P.R.G., Madame Binh, announced her government's Seven Point Peace Proposal for ending the war. At the time the United States and Thieu flatly rejected the proposal which received very widespread support from the D.R.V., other socialist countries and the international anti-war movement.

The 1973 Peace Agreement incorporates all the major points of that proposal which was the original source of the provisions in the present agreement concerning the political future of South Vietnam.

The other major source of the present Agreement is, of course, the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam and the rest of Indochina which the then U.S. Administration (including a Richard M. Nixon as Vice President) refused to sign. The differences between the 1954 and 1973 agreements were well summarised by Leo Goodstadt in the Far Eastern Economic Review of January 29th:

"The peace agreement gives the balance of advantage al-most entirely to the North Vietnamese as the October formula did. Their position, compared with 1954, has improved considerably while Saigon's viability is left highly doubtful. In 1954, mutual withdrawal to North and South of communist and non-communist troops (as well as freedom of movement for the civilian, population to the political regime of its choice) was an integral part of the truce between the French and the communist administration.

"Today, no such regrouping is required. The North Vietnamese troops can remain in place. Only the Americans and their allies are banned from further involvement in Vietnam...

"In 1954, the position of the Saigon Administration was clear enough. Its jurisdiction over the area south of the Demilit-arised Zone was set forth in black and white. Calls for reconciliation with procommunist elements in the South and for the reunification of the halves of Vietnam were issues to be settled in the future. The date for these moves was sufficiently remote to permit Saigon a chance of establishing its hold over the South (and, as events turned out, to make these clauses of the 1954 agreements a dead letter).

"But last week's pact recognises two South Vietnamese administrations with equal rights, to be consulted not only over the exercise to determine the form of government that South Vietnam will enjoy but on problems that may occur in the implementation of the ceasefire".

The armed forces of the P.R.G. can not only remain in place but they also control most of the countryside anyway, whereas Thieu's regime is effectively isolated in the towns.