Speech #890192493

I must add in candor that if Le Duan and Ho Chi Minh view the Presidents peace offensive with caution or with deep suspicion. I am not surprised. I do not share the view of recent Vietnam history which has prevailed in Washington and in some quarters in this country until todaythe view that the Geneva conference set up two sovereign states in north and south. and that the 17th parallel was the frontier between them. that 900.000 refugees fled in terror from the horrors of communism in the north and were generously settled by the nonCommunist Prime Minister the late Diem in the south. that all went well. that the south prospered and was at peace until the government of Hanoi started their aggressive war. sending troops. supplies and general staff to destroy democratic government in the south and to impose their own tyrannical form of communism on the unwilling people there. The history has not been at all like that. Before Geneva. while the French were still the government. the Viet Minh had held a large part of South Vietnam.