Handsome Jean Sainteny, 47, looked like the very Frenchman to talk coexistence with Ho Chi Minh. Sainteny served before the Indo-China war as French Commissioner in Hanoi, and wrote a bitterly anti-U.S., pro-Ho book about it. He was subsequently wounded by an exploding Communist hand grenade, but this did not dim his ardor for Ho, whom he called "the Gandhi of Indo-China."
Last October Sainteny set out for Hanoi with a 20-man mission and the blessings of Premier Pierre Mendès-France. Sainteny defined his objective as "preventing bridges being burned," argued that the Vietnamese people of Hanoi must surely need French culture, and...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
