ATTEMPTED VIETNAM NEGOTIATIONS
[The following editorial, indicating the position of the Algerian government in relation to the crisis precipitated by the U.S. attack on North Vietnam, appeared in the April 8 issue of the Algiers daily Le Peuple. The editorial is of unusual interest because of its revelations concerning U Thant's efforts to open negotiations with Peking and Hanoi, using Algiers as an intermedi-~ ary. The original title is "La contribution de l'Algérie pour un retour A la paix au Vietnam" (Algeria's contribution toward restoring peace in Vietnam). The translation is by World Outlook. |
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On April 1, the Algerian chargé d'affaires at the UN, Hadj Benabdelkader “Azzout, met Mr. Thant, secretary general of the United Nations, Although both of them maintained complete silence about the subject of their discussion, it was believed to be. linked with Chou En=-lai's trip to Algeria at the time and to the latest developments in the American aggression against Vietnam.
Tuesday [April 6], Mr. Bouattoura, the Algerian ambassador to the United Nations relayed a message from President Ben Bella to the secretary general of the United Nations and confirmed in a press release that Algeria had played the role of intermediary between: China and U Thant, who is seeking to arrange a conference of all the interested parties in the problem of Vietnam,
Mr. Bouattoura, who held two conferences with the UN secre-~ tary general before leaving for Algeria, refused to reveal any details about the conferences.
President Ben Bella's message to the secretary general of the United Nations provided particularly important clarifications and specifications on the position of People's China with regard to the war being conducted by the USA against the Vietnamese people and on the means by which this conflict might be settled. The press and journalists have speculated considerably about the nature of President Ben Bella's message....Much of this lacks any foundation and some of it is obviously inspired by subjective considerations, As in the case of the firm and energetic position adopted by the FLN [Front de Libération Nationale] during the national revolution [in Algeria], the government of People's China holds that the basic problem in Vietnam is clear and unmistakable,
_ In Vietnam a colonial war is being waged by the USA against. a people who are seeking only to exercise their right to political and economic independence.
_. If the USA really wants to bring the war to an end, only one road is open: to negotiate with the Vietnamese revolutionists who
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are fighting arms. in hand.
No other power and no other country has any right to negotiate their fate except the Vietnamese people themselves.
Observers at the United Nations believe that Me « Thant asked Mr, Bouattoura, before leaving for Algiers, .to talk with the Chinese prime minister, to sound out what possibilities for success there might be in his taking a trip to the Far Kast, particularly to >: Peking and Hanoi.
But it was felt that it would be useless for the secretary general of the United Nations to undertake a trip to Peking and Hanoi. Because the solution to the problem of Vietnam is not to be found in either Peking or Hanoi but in Saigon; that is, between the Vietnamese people represented by the FNL LFront National de Libération] and the imperialist power combatting them.
The Vietnamese people have the right to ask,.as a precondition, that their rights be recognized, that their revolutionary leaders be recognized as their representatives, and that the colonial nature of the problem and its meaning be recognized, and that any settlement of the war must necessarily be made with them,
-The fact that revolutionary Algeria was chosen by the secre~ tary general and People's ‘China to undertake a responsibility that no other country of the third world was in position to assume, is — to be noted.
--- .Just as the Algerian people made recognition of their right to self-determination a condition "sine qua non" before any negotiations with France, so the Vietnamese have the right to do the same with the USA. It is now up to the USA to accept this and to enter into direct negotiations with the genuine representatives of the Vietnamese people, that is the FNL. oo
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