396.1 GE/5–1254: Telegram
Third Plenary Session on Indochina, Geneva, May 12, 3:05 p.m.: The United States Delegation to the Department of State
Secto 191. Repeated information London 155, Tokyo 53, priority Paris 248, Saigon 62, Phnom Penh, Vientiane unn, Moscow 65. Tokyo [Page 785] for CINCFE. Department pass Defense. Following is text my statement today Third Indochina Plenary:
The United States delegation has listened with interest to the impressive observations of the chief of the Vietnamese delegation. We will give close study to the proposal he has made and in a future session will give the United States views on it. The United States and more than 30 other nations recognize the government which he represents here as the legal government of free and independent Vietnam.
I wish to make it clear, Mr. Chairman, that the position of the United States is, and has been, that while the Viet Minh is necessarily present as an armed aggressor engaged in hostilities against the Governments of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, this in no way implies recognition of the Viet Minh as a government.
The United States delegation “agrees with the delegate of Vietnam that a correct, practical and democratic way of restoring peace in Vietnam would be for the aggressive belligerents on the other side to make their peace with the legal government and once tranquility is thereby restored, to accept the will of the people as expressed at the polls in national elections, the freedom and honesty of which would be assured by international supervision under United Nations’ auspices”.
We welcome the very pertinent questions put forward by Mr. Eden and will await replies with the greatest interest.
In particular, we consider it essential that the program for the orderly cessation of hostilities be under effective international supervision under the auspices of the United Nations.
I believe Mr. Eden’s advice to this conference to be very sound. Therefore, I will not take your time to refer to the all too familiar distorted version of past and present events presented to us this afternoon by the delegate from Communist China. I don’t think they’ll change the considered opinion of anyone in this room, or anywhere else for that matter.