Another No from Ho

To a list that grows longer and unlikelier almost by the day, press reports last week added Rumania as yet another would-be mediator of the war in Viet Nam. No sooner had the State Department replied that the Rumanian government has given "no indication" that it has any interest in acting as an intermediary, than Britain's Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that his government is trying once again to reconvene the Geneva conference that split North and South Viet Nam into separate entities eleven years ago. "The American Government is prepared to have discussions on the basis of the 1954 settlement at Geneva," said Wilson. "But is Hanoi?"

The answer, of course, is no. Hsinhua, Red China's official press agency, reiterated Hanoi's uninterest in negotiations by releasing a letter that North Viet Nam's President Ho Chi Minh wrote two weeks ago to U.S. Scientist Linus Pauling, a leading ban-the-bomb crusader. For the umpteenth time, Ho denounced "U.S. aggression," calling it "the sole root of the serious situation in Viet Nam and in Southeast Asia." His letter then proceeded to enunciate the unvarying set of preconditions to peace talks that Hanoi laid down last April. Once again Ho insisted that the "most correct way" to end the war was for "the U.S. imperialists" to withdraw their troops, abandon their ally and accept the Viet Cong's program for communization of South Viet Nam.

Said Secretary of State Dean Rusk at a press conference: "We are not interested in saving face, but in saving Viet Nam. There has not been and there is not now any indication from Hanoi that they are prepared to accept the self-determination and independent existence of their neighbors as free countries." Under the circumstances, the peacemakers could hardly feel blessed.

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