10,000 mines in 10,000 months?

The Nixon Administration has also violated provisions of the ceasefire relating to North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Under Article 2 of the agreement the United States promised to end the mining of "the territorial waters, ports, harbours, and waterways of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam". In three months the Americans have exploded only three mines out of the estimated 10,000 mines dropped in North Vietnamese waters, Nguyen Van Tien commented that the United States Government had resorted to different reasons to justify the delay in clearing all the mines. "But if one takes into account the huge military power and technology of the U.S. its failure to explode more than I mine per month is quite inexplicable. Perhaps it will take the United States 10,000 months to complete the clearance of 10,000 mines".

Furthermore the Americans sent 15 ships, dozens of helicopters and hundreds of troops to North Vietnam to clear the mines. Their failure to make any progress in doing so suggests that the real reason for the presence of so many American military personnel is to gather intelligence information, in violation of Article 7 of the Protocol to the Paris Agreement concerning the removal of the mines.

In a speech to the Australian Overseas Students Conference, Le Mai, a member of the P.R.G. delegation, explained how the D.R.V. and P.R.G. had discovered another American violation in relation to page break >[unclear: forth] Vietnam. "When we asked Ameri-[unclear: an] officials how we had violated the [unclear: asefire] they told us that the D.R.V. [unclear: id] sent troops and armaments into [unclear: uth] Vietnam. We then asked what evi[unclear: nce] they had for this accusation. The [unclear: mericans] replied that they had this in-[unclear: rmation] because of reconnaissance [unclear: ghts] over the D.R.V. We told them that [unclear: uder] the Paris Agreement they were [unclear: rbidden] to carry out such means of [unclear: thering] intelligence. The U.S. Govern-[unclear: ent] officials were confused and could [unclear: it] answer."