Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
CIA source, based upon the report of a nationalist southern Vietnamese with "extensive" political contacts. Diem was greatly troubled in early July over France's apparent inclination to abandon the North rather than seek to retain a foothold there.24 Diem was said to be convinced that partition would be suicidal, since it would put an end to active anti-Viet Minh resistance. Moreover, Diem was convinced that the French intended to maintain a hold on the South only through manipulating independent irregular forces, such as the armed sects to whom the French allegedly were providing rifles.
- d. Note to French Delegation Rejects Partition
GVN anger at hints of a possible French sellout on the partition issue was reflected in a note handed the French delegation (and, without France's knowledge, to the U.S. delegation also) by Nguyen Huu Chau of the Vietnamese delegation on 17 July 1954. The note maintained that not until 16 July did Vietnam learn that at the very time the French High Command had ordered the evacuation of troops from important areas in the Tonkin Delta, the French had also "accepted abandoning to the Viet Minh all of that part situated north of the eighteenth parallel and that the delegation of the Viet Minh might claim an even more advantageous demarcation line." The Vietnamese delegation protested against having been left "in complete ignorance" of French proposals, which were said not to "take any account of the unanimous will for national unity of the Vietnamese people." Disparaging the regroupment plan and the "precarious" nature of the cease-fire being considered, the note again urged that a cease-fire be accompanied by the disarmament of "all the belligerent forces in Vietnam." This would be followed, by provisional United Nations control of all Vietnam "pending the complete re-establishment of security, of order and of peace...which will permit the Vietnamese people to decide their destiny by free elections." UN control of a unified Vietnam, the note stated, was preferable to "its maintenance in power in a country dismembered and condemned to slavery."25
- e. Vietnamese Register Opposition to Elections
The long-standing GVN hostility to partition, expressed well in advance of final agreement to that arrangement, was paralleled by a wariness of a national plebescite on unification. In June, 1954, the Saigon Mission cabled Washington that a national election:
- "...to which Department quite rightly attaches importance...is now of less significance in Vietnam than before owing to general feeling of panic and anxiety lest entire country be lost through unfortunate armistice terms. Press has announced that decrees will presently be signed by Bao Dai providing for municipal elections and, with exception of Saigon-Cholon, for direct election of mayors. This should
