Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
Pathet Lao and Free Khmer. Throughout the month of May, the DRV had demanded that representatives of these movements be invited to the Conference to sit, like the Viet Minh, as belligerents wielding governmental power. These demands were consistently rejected by the non-Communist side, which argued that the Pathet Lao and Free Khmer were creatures of the Viet Minh, guilty of aggression against the Cambodian and Laotian governments (in contrast to the "civil war" in Vietnam), and not deserving status which they had in no way earned. When Molotov, on 17 May, recommended that "military matters" should be considered first, the question of seating the Pathet Lao and Khmer delegations was dropped.
Nevertheless, the Viet Minh persisted in their position on an all-Indochina political settlement when the significant bargaining was reduced to "underground" military talks between them and the French beginning in early June.25 The first compromise of the Viet Minh's position came on 20 May when Chou En-lai, in the same conversation with Eden at which the chief Chinese delegate also agreed to separate military from political matters, admitted that political settlements might be different for the three Indochinese states. Chou thus moved a step closer to the Western position, which held that the Laotian and Cambodian cases were substantially different from that in Vietnam. Not surprisingly, the Viet Minh, at a secret meeting with the French on 10 June, suddenly indicated their preference for concentrating on Vietnam rather than demanding the inclusion of Laotian and Cambodian problems in the bilateral discussions.26
- g. Chinese Play a Major Role in Pathet Lao–Free Khmer Exclusion
The Viet Minh's major concern, as indicated on 16 June, was that they at least obtain absolute control of the Tonkin Delta, including Hanoi and Haiphong.27 Neither Chou nor the Viet Minh, however, went so far as to dismiss the existence of legitimate resistance movements in Laos and Cambodia. But in ongoing talks with the British, Chou proved far more willing than the Viet Minh to push aside Pathet Lao–Free Khmer interests. On 17 June, at a time when four rounds of secret Franco–Viet Minh military talks had failed to make headway, Chou told Eden that it "would not be difficult" to gain Viet Minh agreement on withdrawing their "volunteers" from Cambodia and Laos. Eden, moreover, got the impression from his meeting with Chou that the latter earnestly wanted a settlement and was greatly concerned over the possible break up of the conference.28 Cambodian resistance forces were small, making a political settlement with the Royal Government "easily" obtainable. In Laos, where those forces were larger, regroupment areas along the border with Vietnam and China (Sam Neua and Phong Saly Provinces) would be required. Asked by Eden whether there might not be difficulty in gaining Viet Minh agreement to the withdrawal of their forces from the two countries, Chou replied it would "not be difficult" in the context of a withdrawal of all foreign forces.29
The Chinese, almost certainly with Soviet support,30 had made a major breakthrough in the negotiations by implicitly adopting the Western view that the Pathet Lao and Free Khmer forces did not represent
