SOUTH VIET NAM
General Nguyen Khanh formally resigned last week as South Viet Nam's caretaker Premier, meeting the two-month deadline imposed on him after last August's riots. He was succeeded by Tran Van Huong, 61, a battered but durable civilian of low origins and high ideals.
Born of a family so poor that he was given away in infancy to foster parents, Huong struggled to become a schoolteacher in his native Mekong Delta. After joining Viet Nam's fight for independence in 1945, he led 150 guerrillas in the Plain of Reeds, only to quit when the insurgents were taken over by the Communists. But Huong refused to teach again under the French colonial regime; he was working in a pharmacy in 1954 when independent South Viet Nam's first leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, invited him to become mayor of Saigon.
Mayor Huong captivated the Saigonese by riding around town on a bicycle. He resigned in protest against Diem's autocratic ways, joined a band of dissidents who signed an anti-Diem petition in 1959—and spent three years in prison for his pains.
As Premier, Cyclist Huong will be riding a tightwire in tandem with Khanh, who plans to retain the real power as commander in chief. Huong's mandate is indefinite, his regime "transitional." But U.S. officials were cheered by his unexpectedly hard-hitting acceptance speech. He vowed to "clean and simplify" government, rally Viet Nam's youth to the cause, and press "total war" on the Viet Cong.