Thant has new peace plan: Vietnam

Unitd Nations: United Nations Secretary-General, U Thant was reported to have given eight governments a paper setting forth his plan for settling the war in Vietnam by simultaneously stopping military action and starting talks.

Diplomatic sources said the paper had gone to the United States, North Vietnam and South Vietnam as belligerents, Britain and the Soviet Union as cochairmen of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indo-China, and Canada, India and Poland as members of the International Control Commission policing the 1054 Geneva accords.

They said the paper suggested that US bombing of North Vietnam, all military action in South Vietnam and the sending of US and North Vietnamese troops to South Vietnam should stop simultaneously at the same time, peace talks should start between the United States and North Vietnam.

Later, South Vietnam and the Vietcong should be brought into talks and after that Britain, the Soviet Union, Canada, India, Poland and others should be added — including China if it would come in.

This process should lead to a new Geneva Conference to work out a binding settlement.

The informants said that before U Thant went on vacation to Burma on February 22, he sent word to North Vietnam that he would like to meet in Rangoon with North Vietnamese officials. Accordingly three officials from North Vietnam met Thant in Rangoon.

The informants said U Thant outlined his new ideas to the North Vietnamese in that talk and, after his return to New York, distributed the paper to the eight governments around March 14, when he conferred with US ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg.

A US delegation spokesman declined to comment on published reports that the United States had accepted U Thant’s new suggestions “in principle” (the Boston Globe’s Phrase) and that the United States had replied with “Somewhere between a full acceptance and a full rejection” (the Washington Post’s phrase) He would not even say whether there had been a US reply.