263. Editorial Note
On April 17 following a week-long visit to Moscow by the First Secretary of North Vietnam’s Communist Party, Le Duan, the Soviet and North Vietnamese Governments issued a joint communiqué in which the Soviet Union promised additional military assistance to North Vietnam. The two countries also criticized President Johnson’s Johns Hopkins speech and expressed support for international conferences on Laos and Cambodia. For text of the communiqué, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1965, pages 855–856. Analysis of the communiqué, as well as of Soviet Premier Kosygin’s speech of April 19 in which he reaffirmed some of the points in the communiqué, is in Hughes’ memorandum RSB-41 of April 20 to Rusk (Department of State, INR Files: Lot 81 D 343, Vietnam INR Studies), and Cooper’s April 20 memorandum to McGeorge Bundy (Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Vietnam, Johns Hopkins Speech Reactions). For text of the President’s speech at Johns Hopkins, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, Book I, pages 394–399.
The idea of a conference on Cambodia had first been broached publicly by Cambodian Premier Prince Sihanouk in mid-March. The Department of State’s attitude regarding a Cambodian conference, which had also been proposed through diplomatic channels by the Soviet Government to the British Government, was contained in telegram 2363 to Saigon, April 19. (Department of State, Central Files,POL 32–1 CAMB.-VIET S) The Cambodian conference proposal was also discussed in a telephone conversation between William Bundy and U. Alexis Johnson on April 23, a memorandum of which is in the Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Vietnam, SEA Special Intell. Material, Vol. V)