(2 of 9)
1) An expanded International Control Commission to supervise the ceasefire. The present I.C.C., consisting of Canada, Poland and India, is a forlorn remnant that has been charged since 1954 with enforcing the Geneva Accords in Indochina. Other nations and considerable manpower would have to be added to the I.C.C. to enable it to monitor the cease-fire with any effectiveness.
2) A committee composed of Saigon government and P.R.G. representatives to take on the formidable task of organizing a caretaker government. In this government, the main political factions in South Viet Nam—Communist, neutralist and the Thieu government—would be represented, but not necessarily equally. Which groups would have how large a share in the caretaker government—and therefore to some extent in the elections and constitution that ensue from it—would be subject to negotiations between the representatives of the Saigon government and the P.R.G. on the committee. This provision meets Nixon's demands that he not have to participate in Thieu's downfall—because Thieu could stay in office until the committee set up the caretaker government—and that the South Vietnamese be responsible for working out their own political future.
3) A committee composed of all four parties to the war: the U.S., Hanoi, the Thieu government and the P.R.G. This group would work with the I.C.C., arbitrating who controlled what territory at the time of the ceasefire, negotiating the U.S. withdrawal and the release of the P.O.W.s and the other large, overall problems of ending combat in Viet Nam.
The complex package had been worked out by Kissinger and Hanoi's Le Duc Tho in Paris apparently without Thieu's approval, and Kissinger's arrival in Saigon with the agreement spurred Thieu into a frenzy of defensive activity. Emerging from his near imperial isolation, he began reaching out for public support. He turned up at a Saigon youth rally to rail against "henchmen of the Communists." He gave dinners for a variety of officials and legislators, some of them opposition figures he normally scorns—or jails. He ordered banners placed in Saigon bearing his contention that the Vietnamese people oppose a tripartite government.
The North Vietnamese were active too. One day last week North Vietnamese envoys in Prague, Warsaw, Bucharest, Belgrade, Budapest and East Berlin simultaneously requested audiences with the party leaders of the Eastern European Communist nations, all of whom had been pressing Hanoi to make a settlement. Presumably the East Europeans were pleased with the briefings, for the North Vietnamese diplomats drove back to their embassies with renewed promises of bloc support.
There were other straws in the Indochinese winds too. The government of Laos began peace talks with the Communist Pathet Lao, and the Cambodian government suddenly requested that journalists refrain from using the word
Communist in print, explaining that it would prefer them to use the more neutral terms North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.