The War: Stirrings at the Peace Table

MANY U.S. goals in Viet Nam have been scaled down or simply abandoned, but President Nixon has frequently renewed two pledges. One is that Saigon will be given "a reasonable chance" of survival. The other, an emotional issue about which the President has made it clear there can be no compromise, is that the U.S. will fight on until it can recover the 460-odd Americans now held prisoner.

For months, the Communists demanded that the U.S. make concessions before they would even discuss the prisoners. "It always comes back to the same thing," Nixon said in a moment of exasperation. "If we end our involvement and set a date, they will agree to discuss prisoners--not to release them." Then, last week, the Communists suddenly offered the captives for ransom--and thus created a major dilemma for the Administration.

Seven-Part Plan. The new approach came from Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the austerely handsome ex-schoolteacher who represents the Communist Viet Cong at the long-deadlocked peace talks in Paris. By no coincidence, the plan was put on the table only a week after Le Due Tho--Hanoi's chief envoy to the talks--returned to Paris following a 14-month absence. As the key point in a seven-part plan, Madame Binh declared that if the U.S. agreed to withdraw all its forces from Viet Nam by the end of this year, the Communists would agree to return all the prisoners at a proportionate rate. "These two operations, [the American withdrawal and the liberation of prisoners] will begin on the same date and will end on the same date," said Madame Binh.

It was not that simple, of course. In addition to U.S. withdrawal, the Communists reiterated some familiar and, to the Administration, unacceptable demands: that the U.S. cut off all aid to Viet Nam and abandon the "puppet" government in Saigon in favor of a coalition that would include the Communists. In effect, the Communists were saying: If you really want your prisoners so badly, take them, and give us South Viet Nam in exchange.

Bad Eggs. The White House reacted warily. "They have put one seemingly good egg in the basket with all the bad ones," said an Administration spokesman. Presidential Press Secretary Ron Ziegler noted that the proposal contained "positive as well as clearly unacceptable elements," but he added that the U.S. would never "turn the 17 million people of Viet Nam over to the Communists."

The U.S. appeared to be caught in a trap. On the military front, it is already withdrawing its forces from Viet Nam. On the political front, the U.S. Senate has voted an amendment to the draft-extension bill that is remarkably similar to the Communist proposal: a withdrawal in nine months, conditional on an agreement within 90 days for the return of prisoners. (The measure has not been approved by the House, nor is it binding on the Administration.)

The Communist offer brought some prompt expressions of interest on Capitol Hill. "These proposals mark a different point of departure," said Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, sponsor of the end-the-war amendment. On the Republican side, Senator Hugh Scott agreed: "Now we can start negotiating seriously."

Hard Probing. To look into the possibility of such negotiations, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger set out at week's end on a "fact-finding" trip that would take him to both Saigon and

Paris. The Administration insisted that Kissinger had planned the trip long before the Communists made their move, but such pronouncements no longer sound convincing, especially in the wake of the Pentagon papers. What is more, Hanoi's top negotiators in Paris let it be known that they are "ready" to meet Kissinger when he reaches Paris late this week. It seemed odd, too, that Defense Secretary Melvin Laird happened to be journeying across the Pacific on a tour of inspection.

There was indeed much hard probing to be done on the Communist offer. On what timetable exactly did the Communists plan to release the prisoners? And would the U.S. have to drop all its plans for helping Saigon with military aid? "If you interpret it literally," said one skeptical Washington official, "then you'd have to take away the weapons we've already given them."

Ransom. There was no doubt however, that the Communist plan was a skillful effort to capitalize on America's weariness with an unsuccessful war. The President might be inclined to dismiss the whole package as too one-sided, but because of that one good egg in the basket -- the release of P.W.s -- he knows, as a politician with a sense of the public mood, that he cannot afford to do so. Less than a month ago, Secretary of State William Rogers declared: "Obviously the U.S., although we have tremendous concern for the safety of the prisoners, can't lose sight of our national purposes, and we can't absolutely abandon ransom." our But perhaps national it is no objectives to longer so pay certain to the American public that any "national objective" -- particularly maintenance of the present Saigon regime -- is more important than getting the prisoners home.

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