FOR more than a month, U.S. intelligence agencies have been persistently reporting that the North Vietnamese were sending masses of troops and weapons down the Ho Chi Minh Trail toward South Viet Nam. U.S. officials estimated that since Jan. 1, the Communists had moved some 40,000 men plus 300 tanks, 150 heavy artillery pieces, 160 antiaircraft guns and 300 trucks down the trail. The only important change from pre-cease-fire days, in fact, seemed to be that the North Vietnamese were driving southward in broad daylight, since they were no longer fearful of U.S. air strikes. The trail, says one American analyst, "looks like the New Jersey Turnpike during rush hour."
U.S. officials are not at all sure what the movement means. It could merely be Hanoi's response—illegal but understandable—to the large shipments of U.S. supplies to South Viet Nam during November and December. But it could also indicate that the North Vietnamese are plotting a major offensive for later this year, after the U.S. withdrawal is complete. The situation, remarked a high U.S. official last week, "could be very dangerous."
At first, Washington remained silent, wanting to get the peace agreement signed and the release of war prisoners under way. But last week the State Department publicly expressed "concern," and President Nixon himself followed up by demanding that Hanoi accept the limitations imposed by the Paris Accord. "Based on my actions of the past four years," he declared, "the North Vietnamese should not lightly disregard such expressions of concern." He seemed to be implying that, if the infiltration continues, he would renew the U.S. bombing of Communist supply lines.
The U.S. was not the only nation irate about cease-fire violations. Canada, the chief Western member on the four-nation International Commission of Control and Supervision, has been so hampered by Communist obstruction that Ottawa is considering a walkout. Canada's External Affairs Secretary Mitchell Sharp flew to Indochina last week for a three-day tour of Saigon, Vientiane and Hanoi. His purpose: to size up the problems of Canada's 290-man mission to the ICCS. The U.S. is extremely anxious for Canada to remain, for, as one American diplomat put it, "there is no question that the Canadians have provided the brains and the muscle of the operation."
On the other hand, the Canadians recognize the difficulty—if not the impossibility—of the organization's task. Earlier this month, for example, Poland and Hungary refused to investigate a U.S. complaint that Hanoi had installed SA-2 antiaircraft missiles at Khe Sanh, on the grounds that an ICCS team would have no way of knowing whether missiles had been installed before or after the ceasefire.
No matter what Sharp reports to his government, the Canadians will find it difficult simply to depart. In the end, the Canadians may be forced to remain in Viet Nam simply because their withdrawal would probably destroy the peace-keeping machinery so painstakingly devised by Washington, Hanoi and Saigon.
Cocktails with the V.C.