Banquet Barrage

Asia's second most successful Communist intriguer, Ho Chi Minh. flew into Peking to see the No. 1 in his business, Mao Tse-tung. As a special honor, No. 1 himself went down to the airport to greet wisp-whiskered Ho, a gesture Mao had not bestowed on such other arriving VIPs as India's Nehru, Britain's Attlee, the U.N.'s Dag Hammarskjold, or even Russia's Khrushchev and Bulganin. Ho and Mao, according to Peking radio, "embraced with great warmth."

They had topics to talk over warmly, too. Though Communist North Viet Nam inherited the great Red River rice bowl, it also inherited one of the world's most densely populated areas, and there are more mouths than rice. China itself is in no shape to help out. Famine has spread in the wake of last year's worst floods of the century, and last week the Yangtze was again rising toward the "alarm line."

But China's famine was not in evidence at the banquet for Ho given by Premier Chou Enlai, where, according to Radio Peking, there was much "clinking of glasses with those sitting at nearby tables." The Communists also feasted on propaganda. The U.S., charged Chou, is trying to block "peaceful unification of Viet Nam." "These plots," echoed Ho, "gravely threaten peace." Together, they demanded "thorough implementation" of the Geneva Agreements. Under the terms of Geneva, the Communists and the French are supposed to consult together July 20 to work out plans for an all-Viet Nam election next year. The Communists may well decide to press for this at the Big Four Conference.

Accordingly, after being feted in Peking, Ho was bound for Moscow. Ho has said that he will negotiate for elections only with the French and not with South Viet Nam's Premier Ngo Din Diem, whose government did not sign the Geneva Agreements. Ho, who fought the seven year Indo-China war in the guise of a local patriot eager to throw out French colonialism, now wants the French around to help him take over South Viet Nam.

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