Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- to some extent meet Department's requirement in this regard although it is far less than national elections or preparations for National Constituent Assembly."26
The GVN protest note to the French of 17 July asserted that a cease-fire without disarmament was incompatible with a plebiscite. They held further that the regroupment of the armed forces of the belligerents into separate north-south zones compromised in advance the freedom of any future elections. Moreover, in the GVN view, elections could be considered only after internal security and peace had been re-established, thereby excluding a set time-frame.27 In short, the GVN argued strongly against any scheduled post-settlement national election, and warned that a plebiscite to determine a government for a unified Vietnam could hardly be envisaged with the northern zone controlled by communist armed forces.
- f. GVN Rejects Draft of Final Declaration
On 18 July, GVN, in a conference session, Foreign Minister Tran Van Do spoke out against the draft Final Declaration of the Conference which had been circulated among the delegations. He said that Vietnam could not associate itself with the declaration, and pointed in particular to the conditions for a cease-fire, which stipulated a division of the country, and to Vietnam's lack of an opportunity to present its own proposals. Tran Van Do requested the right to offer Vietnam's own draft declaration at another plenary session.28
- g. GVN Presents Counter-Proposals
The next day, 19 July, the Vietnamese delegation offered its proposals, an elaboration of the ideas contained in the note to the French delegation. The proposal warned that the French, Soviet, and Viet Minh drafts all spoke of a provisional partition, whereas the inevitable result would in fact be "to produce in Vietnam the same effects as in Germany, Austria, and Korea." The proposal went on: "it would not bring the peace which is sought for, deeply wounding the national sentiment of the Vietnamese people; it would provoke trouble throughout the country, trouble which would not fail to threaten a peace so dearly acquired." The delegation then renewed its plan for a cease-fire in small regroupment zones; the disarming of irregular troops and, after a fixed period, of all Viet Minh troops; the withdrawal of foreign troops simultaneous with disarmament of the Viet Minh; and UN control of the cease-fire, the regroupment, the disarmament and withdrawal, the elections which would follow the restoration of order, and national administration.29
Tran Van Do's proposal did not receive consideration at the final plenary session of the Geneva Conference on 21 July.30 The delegation head protested this as well as the "hasty conclusion of the Armistice Agreement by the French and Viet Minh High Commanders only..." Furthermore, Tran Van Do protested the abandonment of national territory
