UNITED NATIONS

Adlai Stevenson and Hanoi

By ARNOLD BEICHMAN

There has been a great deal of pressure on me in the United States from many sources to take a position—a public position—inconsistent with that of my Government. Actually, I don't agree with those protestants. My hope in Vietnam is that resistance there may establish the fact that changes in Asia are not to be precipitated by outside forces.—Adlui Stevenson in his last public utterance half an hour before his death.

ALAI STEVENSON died on August 14 in a London street and now he is the centre of controversy about negotiation offers from Hanoi which the American government rejected without informing the American people about them. UN Secretary-General U Thant and the State Department have vouched for the authen- ticity of these offers. Although Mr. Thant says there were two, the State Department thus far has confirmed only one such offer.

The crucial questions, however, are how serious were these Hanoi offers and what did Ambassador Stevenson think of them. Those who have read Eric Sevareid's post-mortem dis- closures in Look magazine are told that Mr. Stevenson, 'who was working closely with U Thant in these attempts, was convinced that these opportunities should have been seized, whatever their ultimate result.'

Yet to believe that Mr. Stevenson took these negotiation offers seriously is to believe what those who knew him cannot believe: namely, that he would willingly, on orders from high officials, compromise his intellectual honour when the issue involved war and peace. I say this because Mr. Stevenson's signature is on an official letter, dated February 27, 1965, and made public at the time, a letter whose contents raise the most serious questions about the validity of the Hanoi proposals. Let me recapitulate: in the November 30 issue of Look, Mr. Sevareid reported a conversation with Mr. Steven- .on on August 12, two days before the Am- bassador's sudden death in Grosvenor Square. According to the memoir, he told the American radio and TV commentator that U Thant 'hid privately obtained agreement from authorities in North Vietnam that they would send an emissary to talk with an American emissary, in Rangoon, Burma. Someone in Washington insisted that this attempt be postponed until after the presi- dential election. When the election was over, U Thant again pursued the matter; Hanoi was still willing to send its man. But Defence Secre- tary Robert McNamara, Adlai went on, flatly opposed the attempt.'

The next proposal was from U Thant for 'an outright cease-fire,' the terms of which could be written by US officials 'exactly as they saw fit, and he, U Thant, would announce it in exactly those words. Again, so Stevenson said to me, McNamara turned this down, and from Secretary Rusk there was no response, to Stevenson's knowledge.' As far as I can piece together the chronology of these 'negotiations' feelers, it goes something like this: Late August 1964: U Thant meets with Mr.

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Stevenson and, several days later, with Mr. Rusk about 'the Vietnam problem.' Thereafter, Mr.

Thant is able to get in touch, via Algiers, with a North Vietnamese mission about the possibility of negotiations.

Late September 1964: U Thant is told that Hanoi is willing to talk with American repre- sentatives in Rangoon.

First week of October 1964: Mr. Stevenson confers with Mr. Thant at the UN Secretariat Building and is told about Hanoi's 'favourable' reaction. Mr. Stevenson leaves, almoSt immedi- ately, by plane for Washington.

Between the above date and the first week in November, Mr. Stevenson notifies the UN Secretary-General that Washington has rejected the Hanoi .offer. • . •

Late in November: Mr. Thant seeks to revive the Hanoi offer, but it .is once more rejected.

February 25, 1965: Mr. Thant issues a statement in which he says that 'I am sure that the great American people, if only they know the-true facts in the background to the develop- ments in South Vietnam, will agree with me 111:;t further bloodshed is unnecessary.'

The story, however, does not end here. be- cause tvyo days later Mr. Stevenson sent a letter over his signature to Ambassador Roger Seydoux of Fiance, President of the Security Council in February 1965, which contained one sentence which must affect the interpretation placed upon these Hanoi offers. Dated February 27, Mr. Stevenson's letter was an eight-point summary of a US government report entitled 'Aggression from the North, the Record of North Vietnam's Campaign to. Conquer South Viet- nam' and which Mr. Stevenson asked to be dis- tributed as a United Nations document to member states.

The facts in the report, wrote Mr. Stevenson, `make it unmistakably- clear that the character of that conflict is an aggressive war of conquest waged against a neighbour—and make nonsense of the cynical allegation that this is simply an indigenous insurrection.' The crucial sentence I refer to comes towards the end of the letter. after Mr. Stevenson has expressed his hope for a cessation of 'aggression by Hanoi,' which in turn, he wrote, would lead to a US military withdrawal. Mr. Stevenson continues: 'In the meantime, my Government awaits the first indication of any intent by the government in Hanoi, to return to the ways of peace and peaceful resolution of this international conflict.' (My italics.) The first indication of any intent. Could Mr. Stevenson really have written anything so sweep- ing in its meaning had he been persuaded in the slightest that Hanoi's overtures were meaning- ful? Would he have so cavalierly repudiated Mr. Thant, with whom, says Mr. Sevareid, Mr. Stevenson 'was working closely'? During N1r. Stevenson's five-year tenure, he sometimes had his unhappy moments about US foreign policy and over the occasional breakdown of communi- cations between Washington and the US Mission in New York. In the case of the Hanoi offers, he was privy to their existence as much as anybody else in government.

Thus there is no getting around Mr. Steven- son's phrase -'the first indication of any intent' ---unless we assume that he Would allow his signature to appear on a public document which apparently contained such a monstrous untruth. I am confident that when Mr. Stevenson signed the letter of February 27, he knew what he doing. How Mr. Sevareid's memoir clashes ■% ith my thesis based on the public record is for others now to explain.