https://declassified.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/f3d10113f8173de9ee90c224e5ca8607.pdf 5aa85ace9aebd96d1a5198cd9845eab5 PDF Text Text Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act ' Document divulgue en vertu de ia^oi sur l'acces a I'information APPEIDIZ 30 Statement made by the Secretary of State for External Affairs,' the Honourable Paul Martin, in the Standing Committee for External Affairs on the Subject of Vietnam, June 10,1965. • I would like to say something about Vietnam, which is the most important subject facing us at the present time. In the House of Commons, on Friday a week ago, I did amplify the government’s position on this subject. However, there was then a limited opportunity . for doing so.and there was no opportunity for interrogation, nor for rebuttal. Therefore, with your permission, this morning I might deal with the Vietnamese situation. I would want to provide a rebuttal of some of. the things that have been said about this situation; not by way of. polemic but by way of exposition so that.we will have as objective a picture of this critical situation as I think we should have. If this proposal is satisfactory, Mr. Chairman, I will proceed on that basis. . I welcome this opportunity of outlining our thinking on the problem in Vietnam where the world is confronted with one of the most complex and dangerous situations we have seen in many years. We are aware of course of the great concern in our country and elsewhere, at the-danger that the continuation of the policies now being pursued in Vietnam by the principal parties could lead to a general conflict. As far as Canada is concerned, we are not directly involved in this crisis as one of the protagonists, and this, together with our independent position in Vietnam, gives us a certain freedom of manoeuvre which we have attempted to use as wisely and constructively as we know how, in the interests of world peace. On repeated occasions we have joined in appeals to all sides for restraint. We have done this with the proviso that the appeal be directed equally to all those involved. It was our view, and continues to be our view,. that if these appeals were heeded, they could lead to a downward trend in hostilities or even a de facto cease-fire which either prior to or during a conference would have a tranquilizing effect on the situation and act as a stimulus to constructive discussion. ; - We have also explored the possibilities of preliminary contacts which might be provided in the corridors of a conference, let us say, on Laos, a smaller Indo-China country or, as more recently suggested, at a conference on Cambodia. It is regrettable that the Soviet Union, among others, has not been. willing to follow up their earlier interest in this latter idea and to move forward on the basis of the agreement of the British and United States governments to participate in such a conference. 000270 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act . Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information - 2 i More than that, we have been taking our own quiet soundings of opinion, probing the positions of the interested parties, to see whether there is any common ground on which we can build or help others to build. Unfortunately, diplomacy, especially in this context, is a form of activity whose success varies inversely with the attendant publicity, Government positions, especially Communist government positions, tend to harden markedly when exposed to the full glare of public attention. I informed the House on Monday that our role in Vietnam has not been supine and that we have attempted to use the channels available to us by virtue of our Commission membership to establish contact with North Vietnam. Our Commissioner in . Saigon over the past eight months prior to May 31 made several trips to the capital Of North Vietnam, Hanoi. During these visits he has had discussion with the local leaders and officials in an attempt to assess the North Vietnam government’s position. I asked him to go to Hanoi on May 31 and to see someone senior in the government of Vietnam, the Prime Minister or the Foreign Minister, and this, he did. This is the most recent contact that he has made, and although his report is not an encouraging one, I want to say that we have not abandoned the probing process. Mr. Seaborn, who is our Commissioner, is an officer of considerable experience and ability. He is well qualified for an important assignment of this delicate nature. He had an interview with the Foreign Minister on May 31 in which he expressed Canada’s concern, and our willingness to play a helpful role if possible. He sought clarification of the North Vietnam government’s position including its reaction to the recent pause in the bombings. Naturally I cannot go into any greater detail about it at this time; but I would like to say that the Foreign Minister stated repeatedly that the four conditions which had previously been outlined by the Prime Minister of North Vietnam on April 8, taken as a whole represented the Hanoi government’s approach to a settlement. t The official formula for these conditions is not exactly memorable, and in order to have them permanently recorded, I would like to quote them verbatim from the official text. i First of all I should explain that when the President of the United States, subsequent to the suggestion of Mr. Pearson that there should be a pause in the bombings, announced to the world that the United States would enter into negotiations with Hanoi without 000271 r- �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a i’information - 3 any pre-conditions, the government of Hanoi shortly thereafter responded by stating that before this could be done there would have to be compliance with four conditions which I shall now give you verbatim. These were the four conditions which were also confirmed to Mr. Seaborn on May 31 and I quote : 1. "Recognition of the basic national rights of the Vietnamese people: peace, independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity. According to the Geneva Agreements the United ■ States government must withdraw from South Vietnam all United States troops, military personnel, and weapons of all kinds, dismantle all United States military bases there, cancel its military alliance with South Vietnam. It must end its policy of intervention and aggression in South Vietnam. According to the Geneva Agreements, the United States government must stop its acts of war against North Vietnam, completely cease all encroachment on the territory and sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 2. Pending the peaceful reunification of Vietnam while Vietnam is still temporarily divided into two zones the military provisions of the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam must be strictly respected: the two zones must refrain from joining any military alliance with foreign countries, there must be no foreign military bases, troops and military personnel in their respective territories. 3., The internal affairs of South Vietnam must be settled by the South Vietnamese people themselves, in accordance with the programme of the South Vietnam National Front for Liberation without any foreign interference. 4o The peaceful reunification of Vietnam is to be settled by the Vietnamese people in both zones, without any foreign interference." Now these are the four so-called "clearcut" conditions laid down by the government of North Vietnam. I believe that these represent an uncompromising position and I must say that since Mr. Seaborn was in Hanoi we know that there has not been any satisfactory clarification given to some of the points involved in these four conditions. The real problem is to interpret this position and to see whether any way can be found of dovetailing it with the requirements of the other parties involved. This is a task of considerable delicacy. Since our efforts and those of the other countries are continuing, I cannot go into precise detail without jeopardizing the success of some of these discussions which are in fact now under way. 000272 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loisur l'acces a information - 4 - I would like to assure the committee that we are also in close contact in Ottawa and through our representatives abroad with the British and United States governments, with the South Vietnamese government, and with the authorities in Paris, Moscow and New Delhi, to mention only some of the more active channels. In our pursuit of a diplomatic solution there should be no misunderstanding of the root causes of the present hostilities, and of our deep desire for peace. I think it would be dangerous to misjudge the basic responsibilities of those directly involved, and to direct our appeals or our strictures, only to those who we know are most likely out of reason and conscience to heed us. To apply pressure only to those who are susceptible to our concerns is, in my judgment, naive. It is definitely dangerous, and I say dangerous advisedly because the consequences of a refusal to base policy on facts and a realistic assessment of objectives can only lead to a worse disaster than the one which it seeks to avert. In 1930 this was branded appeasement. all know only too well where it led us. We Now I think in its totality the available evidence -- and I shall say something more about this -- points unmistakably to the conclusion that what is happening in Vietnam today is an armed conflict, with its original roots in the theory and practice of so-called "wars of liberation", and clandestine but crucially important support from the outside. If this form of indirect aggression is allowed to succeed there will be incalculable consequences for world peace. I dealt with this problem at length in the House on May 28. I do not propose to repeat what I said but suffice it to say that if North Vietnam succeeds in taking over the whole of Vietnam by force, if the rest of the world is prepared to sit back and see this happen, saying feebly that, after all, it is only a domestic rebellion so why not accept the inevitable, we would, in my judgment, be guilty of an error of the same nature as the mistakes made at Munich and, before that, in the League of Nations. Aggression is aggression, whether it takes place in Europe, in Ethiopia, or in Vietnam. I am deeply aware, of course, of the dangers of responding to aggression by military means alone; apart from the prospects of escalation, an exclusively military response runs the dangerous risk of forcing the Soviet Union into a position where it too responds by open military means inorder to demonstrate its willingness and its ability to support another.Communist power. Of course, such a Soviet response would undermine or destroy 9 000273 EM �is aomnr 1* ' I Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue.en vertu de la Loi sur I'acces a ^information 6*e ' - 5 - the progress that has been made by the- West in undertaking a meaningful, if limited, dialogue with the Soviet Union. Such a dialogue is one of the cornerstones upon which world peace rests at the present time. So, an exclusively military response to aggression could defeat one of the very purposes of resisting an outward thrust of a militant Communist party. Now, the perspective in these terms is not an attractive one; on the one hand, surrender to Communist aggression only postpones the day when a firmer stand must be taken; on the other, resistance, in exclusively military terms raises the spectre of a wider conflict extending beyond the perimeters of Vietnam. Both alternatives are unacceptable and, because they are unacceptable, it is imperative .that our best and most determined efforts should be directed toward finding a solution by some other means. I have stated repeatedly, and I do so today, that the only acceptable alternative is to negotiate. Our objective is to get negotiations started. We have lost no time and spared no effort in the pursuit of this objective. As I have stated repeatedly, I do not believe, nor does the government believe, that military measures in this situation will yield a solution, and the dangers of escalation are obvious. The greatest restraint has to be shown on all sides if the conflict is not to be widened. I think there is an appreciation of this. There must be a concerted attempt to negotiate a satisfactory settlement, and the most obvious way of doing so is at an international conference where these problems could be dealt with. Canada has been urging from the beginning the holding of a conference to bring this war to a halt. We have urged a cease-fire from the beginning, whether it comes about as a result of a conference on Laos or on Cambodia, a conference of the Geneva powers, or a conference of another kind that would enable the parties to begin discussions so as to afford at least a temporary climate of tranquility. But, to do this, it must be pointed out, there has to be an agreement on more than one side. The United States has clearly affirmed its willingness to agree to such a conference without pre-conditions. The sad fact is that there has. been no satisfactory response from Hanoi. We wanted to test this ourselves and we did test it on May 31 through Mr. Seaborn., I was encouraged to learn that Mr. Stewart, the British Foreign Secretary, informed the British House of Commons. last week that -- and I quote: 000274 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loisur l'acces a ('information - 6 - The aim of Her Majesty’s government is to obtain a conference so that fighting could end and a lasting settlement be obtained. The continuance and indeed, the intensification of the war makes this all the more necessary. I fully agree with that statement. As I have said before, not only is this our aim but this continues to be the objective of the diplomatic effort in which we are engaged. But, the problem is how to get such a conference under way. I was greatly disturbed about this problem some weeks ago and I went down to the United Nations to see the Secretary General. I realized that because of the constitutional and financial crisis at the United Nations this organization was not in a position to provide effective service; but the office of the Secretary General is a powerful one and I wanted to determine myself that U Thant agreed that every effort should be taken by him to try and bring about a meeting of the parties. I am satisfied beyond any doubt that he has worked wisely and assiduously toward this objective. But, any appeal that would be made by the Secretary General, in order to be effective, must be responded to not by one but by both sides. It is not for me to say how the Secretary General should see fit to address himself to this problem, but the fact that he has not done so except through the use of quiet diplomacy I think indicates clearly his appreciation of what the response at the present time would be. It clearly does take two sides to negotiate; it takes a mutual realization that force is inadequate and unacceptable, and it takes a mutual willingness to compose differences peacefully. The United States has repeatedly emphasized ever since President Johnson’s speech on April 7, that the United States is prepared to undertake negotiations. Unfortunately, there has been no comparable demonstration of flexibility from the other side, which has rejected rigidly-all suggestions that it is better to talk about differences than to fight about them. Now, it is true that in this situation there are great prestige commitments or, as it is sometimes known, "face" involved on all sides, and for this reason any progress toward the negotiating table can be made only slowly and step by step. I would recall to the members of the Committee that when the 17 non-aligned powers issued their appeal in Belgrade to all parties for a cease-fire and for the beginning of negotiations to arrest the conflict in 000275 .. �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I’information - 7 - Vietnam, Canada was the first country to accept the essential element of this appeal. It was that negotiations should take place without pre-conditions. Thus far I have concentrated on the diplomatic efforts we have made and will continue to make. I know you will appreciate the complexity of the situation with which we are dealing. Simple solutions will not do, attractive though they may appear. I would like to reiterate what I said in the House on May 28; that is, our view has been from the first that a military solution alone in this situation is neither desirable nor practical. Our objective from the first has been to achieve a cease-fire; our objective is negotiation at any place, at any time, provided such negotiation is directed toward an equitable settlement. We are taking whatever steps we can • in concert with other countries or by ourselves to try to see whether in some way we can penetrate this impasse. In the annals of diplomatic history, I ■ believe the greatest failures have been those solutions to pressing problems which have been put together too hastily, too uncritically and with too shaky a basis on the facts of relevant history. To solve a problem it is first necessary to understand it. I would like to speak about the nature of the problem in Vietnam as we see it. No one is happy about the situation in Vietnam. We all realize the dangerous implications if there were to be an extension of the conflict or a wider participation in it. It involves three of the most powerful nations in the world, including the most powerful nation in Asia and the most populated nation in the world. There is no doubt about the stakes in this situation. However, we have to look at all aspects of the problem in order to be able to fully understand it and to fully respond to it. I hope it is clear that the position of the Canadian government as a non-combatant, as a member of the Commission, is to do whatever it can. U to try to bring about pacification. We have had a long experience in Indo-China. We have been on the Supervisory Commission with India and Poland for 11 years. This has given us an opportunity of objective assessment; it has given us a responsibility which we have to discharge in accordance with our international commitments. To state that what is happening in Vietnam is "an internal rebellion plain and simple" is clearly at variance with established facts which 000276 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l’acces a I'information = 8 — indicate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the essential element has been North Vietnamese interference, limited at first, but growing steadily in scope and intensity. In the midst of the lack of experience in self-government in South Vietnam, following the Geneva settlement of 1954, the Communists were able to build the subversive movement now known as the Viet Cong and it was able to flourish only because of the material support and political direction it received from outside. When I came in here this morning I thought carefully whether, in this committee, I should go further. I have gone thus far; but this is the best opportunity we, as a government, have yet had to put before a proper body of our parliament the facts involved in our stewardship as a member of that Commission. While I appreciate the risk involved in this aspect of my presentation, I feel there is a duty to put the following facts before this committee, and I propose to do so. Some people.contest the claim that North Vietnam has been deeply involved in or indeed has ' instigated the war in the South. They say there is no evidence to show any involvement on the part of North Vietnam and that thus the claim of the United States of America and indeed other countries, like Australia and New Zealand, which now are involved, that they are helping South Vietnam resist outside aggression, falls to the ground. This argument, I believe, is inadequate in its basis and is dangerous in its impact. The evidence has not always been adequately presented. Here, of course, security factors are involved; but the evidence does exist, I assure you, and in quantity. Those who argue that North Vietnam never has been interfering in the affairs of South Vietnam are ignoring, for example, the conclusions on this question of the International Commission in its special report of June 2,1962. In this report India and Canada agreed there was evidence to warrant the conclusion that North Vietnam had, in violation of its obligations under the Cease Fire Agreement of 1954 encouraged, sponsored and supplied activities aimed at the overthrow of the authorities in the South. That special report of 1962 also said other things about the situation in Vietnam. I want to say more about that later on. For the moment I simply wish to point out there has been an impartial international judgment on this matter and that that judgment is against North Vietnam. That judgment was pronounced by members of the International Supervisory Commission, by majority composed of India and Canada, the other member of the Commission, of course, being Poland. 000277 ' �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 9 - However, this problem did not come to an end in 1962 with this special report; on the contrary it has continued to exist and in fact its scope has increased seriously, and so has the evidence for this claim. I tabled the special report in the House in March. It is available to the members of the committee and I think it is indispensable reading in order to fully understand the situation in this very complicated and regrettably dangerous matter. 0000000000 Now to understand the situation confronting us in Vietnam, I think we must uncover some of the vast complicated history of that little country. It is precisely because so many of these complexities seem to be lost sight of, or disregarded, in assessing the problem that I wish to point out now some of the relevant factors as I see them. By the end of the Indo-China war in 1954> during and prior to which France had unsuccessfully tried a variety of constitutional arrangements for Vietnam, two governments had been established in Vietnam, both of which participated in the Geneva Conference, and both of which claimed to speak for the people of Vietnam. On the other hand, there was the regime of Ho Chi Minh which had begun as an anti-colonial resistance movement — the Viet Minh — under Communist leadership. This leadership quickly established its control over all elements in the movement. Although it was active during the resistance to the Japanese invasion, the Viet Minh cannot, in point of historical fact, be given credit for driving the Japanese out of Vietnam in 1945« The Viet Minh had been formed in May 1941, when the Indochinese Communist Party, having decided on a National Front policy, made approaches to various non-Communist groupings. Curing the war, the Viet Minh aided the allies by providing some intelligence information, distributing propaganda, and organizing the odd attack against the Japanese. At the same time, however, the Indochinese Communist Party consolidated its control over the National Front, eliminating or out-manoeuvring the plethora of disorganized non-Communist nationalist groups. In March 1945> the. Japanese, fearing an allied landing, wiped away the facade of Vichy-French administration. The French army was interned (and remained so until the allies landed to disarm the Japanese), and the French administrators were arrested. Thus, when Japan suddenly collapsed in August 1945» catching the allies unprepared for the political consequences which were,to follow in all of southeast Asia, a vacuum was created in Vietnam 000278 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur I'acces a /'information 10 - which the Viet Minh rapidly sought to fill. Two days after the Japanese capitulation, the Viet Minh appeared in Hanoi. Refraining from any attacks on the Japanese, the Communist-led movement concentrated on driving other nationalist movements from the streets of the city. Encountering no resistance from the disorganized non-Communists, from the now uninterested Japanese or from the still imprisoned French, Ho Chi Minh formed a provisional government ■ on August 29, in which the Indochinese Communist Party or the Viet Minh held all key posts. This is, of course, a very condensed view of the vastly complicated period of history in Vietnam associated with the collapse of Japanese rule. I have for lack of time omitted reference to the role of the Chinese in this period, the reentry of the French and their unsuccessful attempts to work out an accommodation with the Ho Chi Minh regime. I have mentioned the role of the Viet Minh vis-a-vis the Japanese because this matter was referred to in the House recently and because I wished to point out the movement’s origins and the fact that it first came to prominence through the creation of a power vacuum, not through an anticolonial war. That came later. Of course, any member of the House of Commons has the duty to put on the record the facts as he sees them. It is equally the duty of those of us who, in the government, have information to give it and that is what I am now doing here. There was no adequate opportunity to do it in the debate in the Houseo But to return to the two Vietnams at Geneva in 1954. The second Vietnamese voice was that of the Southern regime based on Saigon — the State of Vietnam as it was called at the time, to which the French had granted full independence at the beginning of the conference. The Southern government, while no less anti-colonial than the Northern, was at the same time anti-Communist not only for ideological reasons but also out of the fear that a Communist Vietnam might become little more than a protectorate of China, a fate which the Vietnamese have always feared and rejected, as a small nation living close to a larger and more powerful one. Once again, however, it is important to get the historical facts accurate if the problem is to be understood. Although the presence of big powers has been a factor of considerable importance throughout Vietnamese history, it would be an error to see that history as one long struggle against foreign aggression. The Chinese were driven out of Vietnam in 939 A.D. China continued to exert pressure on Vietnam but Vietnamese independence was maintained until 1407 when Chinese rule was restored; this period lasted for only twenty 000279 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information - 11 - years and in 1427 Vietnamese independence was reasserted. The Vietnam of the time however was not of the same territorial dimensions as today and the period following the last defeat of Chinese rule is characterized by the extension of Vietnamese rule southwards, and by contending Vietnamese dynasties. National unity became established only in 1802, but this unity was forged in feudal, dynastic warfare, not in anti-imperialist struggles in the usual sense of the phrase. Although the French had begun to show a colonial interest in the Indo-China area somewhat earlier, it was not until the 1880’s that France succeeded in establishing her rule throughout Vietnam. It is therefore not really accurate to refer to a brief period of freedom enjoyed by the Vietnamese people in the latter half of the nineteenth century when the Chinese Empire was receding and before the French arrived. I have given some account of these historical factors -- and the summary is by no means complete and could not be in the time available - partly because I wished to have the record straight on certain points and partly because I believe it is essential to understand that the division of Vietnam is not something created by the West in its own interests, but is something which represents the polarization of Vietnamese political forces into Communist and non-Communist sectors. It is, moreover, essential to understand who was represented at Geneva in 1954 and who agreed to what before passing judgment on what has happened since then. The settlement reached in Geneva in 1954 comprised two main elements -- a Cease-Fire Agreement, signed by the French High Command of the day and the Peoples Army of Vietnam (the Viet Minh) , and a Final Declaration. The former document is a military agreement providing for regroupment of forces and spelling out other provisions looking to a.separation of combatants and a freezing of their military activities and capabilities. The Final Declaration, on the other hand,, was essentially a political document. It is there that we find references to the fact that the 17th parallel is not to be regarded as a permanent dividing line, and to the prospect of nationwide elections in 1956. I will just make a parenthesis here. You will recall that about a week ago the Chinese Peoples Republic announced that this dividing line need no longer be recognized. . I expressed some doubt that there would be public support given to this position of the Chinese Peoples Republic willingly or quickly by the government of North Vietnam. 000280 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 12 It is certainly clear that those who drafted and signed these documents anticipated that a permanent settlement would probably amount to the Viet Minh establishing its control over the whole territory of Vietnam. The important part of this analysis, however, is the phrase "those who drafted and signed" the Geneva documents. Realizing only too well what the objectives of the Viet Minh leaders would be, the South Vietnamese leaders rejected the terms of the Geneva settlement, before these documents were signed, on the grounds that the division of Vietnam was inimical to the interests of the Vietnamese people because under these terms half of Vietnam was turned over to Communist control. The stand of the Saigon government -- and it must be remembered that it was a newly independent political entity trying to resist the attempt of larger powers to impose their terms of settlement on it — was spelled out in a separate declaration issued by Mr. Tran Van Do, who has most recently re-emerged on the Vietnamese political scene, where he is now Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister of South Vietnam. It might be useful if this declaration could be made available to members' of the Committee because it clearly indicates that the government of South Vietnam did not support the Geneva settlement and, it must also be remembered, neither did the United States. The rejection of the political portion of the Geneva settlement by the South Vietnamese government and the reason for it is often lost sight of by those who criticize the Saigon government as a creation of the Americans and as a political entity which is alleged to continue in existence in violation of the Geneva settlement. Having rejected the terms of the Geneva settlement before it was signed, and having explicitly reserved its right to safeguard its own interests, it cannot —as was argued the other day in the House of Commons — be convincingly accused of violating international obligations. To argue otherwise would be tantamount to saying that the great powers should be able to impose their will on a small and weak state. In fact, there is evidence that the division of Vietnam was a bargain struck at Geneva between the French and the Chinese, the two tradional "imperialist powers" in Vietnam. This division was accepted by the North Vietnamese because they thought it would be temporary and that they would subsequently get what they wanted — the whole of Vietnam -- by the kind of elections which were imprecisely referred to in paragraph 7 of the Final Declaration. 000281 Elal ! �r Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information - 13 ~ The South Vietnamese believed that such elections would amount only to a facade' for a Communist takeover, and rejected the whole idea from the beginning. I remember discussing with President Diem the question whether we should continue to maintain the Commission in Indo-China or whether the time had come for the holding of elections, as was envisaged in the Geneva settlement. He reminded me then, of course, that South Vietnam was not a party to the settlement and also that there was need for the Commission to maintain its presence until such time as a truly objective election could take place. I am not trying to suggest that this was a correct position for him to take, but I do give it as part of the impressions that I have in my mind, naturally, as I try to assess this situation. While reaffirming their belief in the territorial integrity of Vietnam, the South Vietnamese maintained that nationwide elections looking to the reunification of Vietnam would be meaningful only if they were absolutely free, and with a Communist regime installed in Hanoi this condition seemed unlikely to be fulfilled in that half of the country. I myself found this confirmed when I spent three days visiting the million refugees just outside of Saigon. They had come from the North. They were mainly Christian refugees who had fled just as others in Europe have fled, from what they thought was the dangerous encroachment of a Communist power. It is well for us when we are considering this situation to think that there are many parallels to what is happening in Asia today and what happened in Europe that brought about the creation by us of a defensive organization known as NATO to provide for our security. The absence of this kind of arrangement, and an effective kind of arrangement, in Asia today is one of the gaps, and it is one.of the reasons perhaps why this situation exists at present. This stand was consistently maintained, by the government of South Vietnam. The election envisaged in 1956 in the settlement (which had not been signed by the South) did not take place. There were, however, elections within South Vietnam itself, on a South Vietnamese basis rather than on a nationwide basis. As the French withdrew from Indo-China in the years immediately following the Geneva settlement, it became clear that the government in Saigon had no intention of passively accepting the absorption which Hanoi had planned for it. e 000282 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 14 - There were few observers at the time who expected a life span for the Saigon government of more than a few years, where Hanoi had inherited the traditions of a victorious struggle against colonialism, Saigon inherited a legacy of collapse and defeat. Since Hanoi had been the administrative centre for the French administration in Indo-China, Saigon founditself with little political experience and without even the physical facilities for an effective administration. But South Vietnam not only survived, it began to make tangible social and economic progress, partly with outside help but mainly through the determination of the South Vietnamese population itself. This population had by this time been swollen by the million refugees I mentioned'a moment ago who chose not to live under the Communist regime in the North. The fact that this mass migration took place -- often under the greatest hardship and in the face of active opposition from the Communist authorities — is reflection enough on the contention that the Viet Minh had the wholehearted support of the Vietnamese people. No one who could have seen the plight of these refugees could have believed that there is as much credence as some people give at the present time to a distinction between the ideological motive of the Communist in Asia and the Communist in Europe. Realizing that the administration in the South was not going to collapse or allow itself to disappear as anticipated as a result of manipulated elections, and indeed that it showed signs of economic progress beyond anything that had come about in the North, the Hanoi regime decided that a more active and aggressive policy was required in order to establish the control of the whole country; this had been denied by South Vietnam’s refusal to implement terms which the North had agreed to at Geneva but which had — I repeat -- been then rejected by the South. One of the basic stipulations of this Cease-Fire Agreement was that there should be a total regroupment of forces, with the French withdrawing into South Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh’s armies into the North. Unfortunately, the North carried out its obligations only partially, leaving behind — this is based on evidence dealt with by a Committee of the International Commission of which Canada is a member — secret caches or armaments and military personnel who shed their military identification and melted inconspicuously into the countryside, ready to organize political action or to resume hostilities if necessary. The fact that the Northern regime intended to interfere in the South was first made public, although very few people have paid attention to this, in a statement of the Vietnamese 000283 �r Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act • Document dwulgue en vertu de la Loi sur. l'acces a /'information - 15 - Workers Party in July of 1954, just at the end of the Geneva Conference. In part this statement asserted, and I quote: ’’Naturally, at a time when our troops and our administrative authority are being withdrawn towards the North> the Party members and co-patriots in Nam Bo -- that is South Vietnam — will continue to remain in the zones on the other side. The war-mongering elements seek to sabotage the Armistice and reestablish a state of war. Our compatriots and our members must continue to wage a hard struggle. The Party must struggle; its duties must remain with the people educating them, unmasking all activities of warmongers, maintaining the influence of the Party and the government with the ■ people, and winning the respect of the mass for President Ho Chi Minh.” Translated from the usual Communist terminology'; this statement clearly means one thing. It means that Northern agents would be left in the South to disrupt the government there. This residue of men and arms provided the basis for the beginnings of a Hanoi-directed aggression in the South o As a political take-over was seen to be improbable, innocent villagers were terrorized into providing shelter and food for the guerrillas and into helping them to finance their operations. The first target was usually the village administrative officer whose murder could be seen as an effective challenge to the government’s authority and a demonstration of what happens to those who refuse to co-operate. In speaking of instability in Vietnam, in arguing that the Viet Cong have been supported by the peasants, these basic facts must be kept in mind; the Viet Cong have literally murdered hundreds of trained and responsible administrators. In these circumstances it must be admitted that the phenomenon of instability must be judged cautiously. Similarly, peasant support for guerrillas, which is won by murder and intimidation, is not the same as support which is spontaneously given in the exercise of free choice as we know it. Now the suggestion has been made that the government of South Vietnam has never been able 000284 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information - 16 - to hold anything but the cities because it has not enjoyed the support of the people. • This was argued in the House of Commons, and this is believed throughout this country, as I see it in my correspondence. Control of the countryside in South Vietnam has always been a problem for the central authorities, as might be expected in an under-developed country where geographical obstacles are great and communication facilities are limited. Even the Communists with their policestate apparatus have had to face revolts in the North, and fairly recently. Large areas of the South Vietnamese countryside regularly pass from government to Viet Cong control and back again depending on the local military conditions. Most observers of the Vietnamese scene claim that the peasants want nothing more than to be left alone. However, when they are subjected to techniques of blackmail, assassination and torture by the marauding Viet Cong bands, as the Prime Minister of New Zealand pointed out recently in a statement on Vietnam, it would be an extraordinary act of local defiance to withhold co-operation. Co-operation given in this manner however is vastly different from the sort of popular support which critics of the southern position in Vietnam seem to assume the Viet Cong enjoy. Gradually, in the years after 1956, the scope of these terrorist activities increased to the point where the South Vietnamese government, with the limited resources at its disposal, was unable to cope with the problem of guaranteeing the security of its people against this kind of subversion. In these circumstances, the South Vietnamese government did what any government confronted with these problems would do: It appealed for help in the exercise of the legitimate right of self-defence. This is permitted under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. To this appeal the United States responded affirmatively, at the same time making it clear that when the need for military help ended, it would be terminated. These then, are the basic elements in the historical evolution of the dangerous situation confronting the world today in Vietnam. Steadily increasing interference by North Vietnam in the affairs of the South has led to the steady increase ■ of the United States presence. It is imperative that the two should be seen together if our analysis of the problem -- let alone our prescription for its remedy -- is to have any meaning. These developments have been a source of direct concern to the Canadian government right from the beginning. As a member of the International Commission in Vietnam we have had 000285 caee �| : d Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information - 17 - a firsthand and independent experience of the failure, on all sides, to live up to the terms of the Geneva Cease-Fire Agreement 'which it is the Commission’s task to supervise but not to implement. I repeat that if all sides were to live up to the Geneva Cease-Fire Agreement of 1954, we could have peace in that area. There are instruments provided in the Agreement for dealing with grievances. However, if there is no disposition to live up to an agreement, a country like ours has no power, certainly by itself, to enforce it. And so, we must observe and report the situation -- in terms of violations of the agreement — as we see it. I think that to the best of our ability under the successive Canadian governments we have done so and we will continue to do so in the hope that the objective and impartial discharge of our responsibilities in the face of facts available to us may go some distance towards focussing international attention onto all the disturbing factors in the situation and persuading all those involved to face up to their own responsibilities for the generation of this tension and conversely for its relaxation. In the Commission’s special report of June 2,1962, an Indian-Canadian majority presented a balanced assessment of what had been happening in Vietnam where violations of the Cease-Fire Agreement by both sides were producing a dangerously unstable situation." Since that report was published, the situation has deteriorated even further, as we feared it would in the absence of corrective measures applicable to all violations of the Agreement. The intensification of activities in violation of the Agreement led to the Commission’s special message, dated February 13 of this year which, together with the 1962 Report I tabled on March 8. It gives, as Prime Minister Wilson has said, a balanced picture. I would point out that of those countries with whom we are associated in the NATO alliance, no one country has publicly taken a position basically different from the position taken by the government of Canada. This is not without its significance. Since there has been some misunderstanding of the minority report of February 13 presented by Canada, I want to add a few comments by way of clarifying our position. The Canadian minority statement represents our assessment of the facts available to the Commission in Vietnam. It was submitted for reasons arising out of our conviction, based on more than ten years of experience, that to report on only one aspect of the situation in Vietnam, to deal publicly with only one set of violations of the Agreement, is seriously to distort the assessment of the situation. 000286 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information - 18 - It has been argued that the Canadian statement condones the policies of South Vietnam and United States authorities in bombing North Vietnamese installations. I do not know how anyone could possibly come to that conclusion. The sole purpose of the Canadian statement was to augument the presentation of facts in the Indian-Polish report with other and equally significant material including a direct reference to the South Vietnamese authorities’ explanation of the events in question. Our Commission colleagues had been unwilling in the opinion of the Canadian minority report to take these relevant facts into account; this made it necessary for us to do so in order to restore the sense of balance on which the 1962 report was based, but which the majority report in the 1965 message lacked. If we had signed the Indian-Polish document and we did not disagree with the facts which it reports without augmenting it, we might have run the risk of having the Commission convey the impression that the situation described in the 1962 report had changed; that the only violation of the Geneva Agreement since 1962 had been the air strikes against North Vietnam, and that therefore the main responsibility rested on South Vietnam and the United States for the danger of wider hostilities. . Well, in our statement I think we have indicated that this would clearly present a false impression. There is no change in the nature of • the situation, but rather there has been an intensification of the.same factors as were noted in the 1962 report. 0800000e09 Unless North Vietnamese activities and policies are identified, recognized and taken into account, the Commission would be failing to live up to its full range of responsibilities and would be conveying a misleading impression of the problems before it. This leads me to make a few brief comments on the contents of the Canadian statement and the .materials on which it was based. The first half of the statement relates to the conclusions of the comprehensive legal study prepared and re-edited within the Commission. I discussed this at some length in the House of Commons on March 8 and I explained the nature of this legal submission. What I said then may be perhaps read with what I am saying today. 000287 �| " ’■ 1%.„ * Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 19 - Ilie second section of the Canadian statement, in referring to recent allegations of Northern aggression, did not purport to be Commission conclusions. Rather, this section was intended to demonstrate that the Commission had, since its special report of 1962, continued to receive serious allegations, the gravity of which was indicated by references to the substance of the complaints, of Northern aggression in the South. The Commission has not given these matters the attention they deserve, it has not established to the best of its ability whether the complaints are supported by sufficient evidence to warrant the Commission drawing firm conclusions comparable to those concerning the earlier cases in the special report. To ignore these problems by failing to report that they are and indeed have been before the Commission for some time would be to create a seriously distorted image of the full range of violations of the Geneva Agreements of which the 'Commission has had knowledge. I am sure that members of the committee will agree that this would be an intolerable deviation from the impartial and objective approach which I am satisfied beyond any doubt Canadian representatives both civilian and military on the Commission have sought to follow since we accepted ■ this responsibility in 1954® Far from justifying or condoning the policies followed by one or the other of the . parties, or both, we have attempted — and when I say we, I mean the Canadian members of the Commission, some former officers are here today sitting against this wall, who spent many difficult months under trying circumstances in Indo-China — to take cognizance of.all the relevant facts and to impart a sense of balance to the picture presented to the international community at large ■ by the Commission. Now I believe that if we are to understand what is at stake in Vietnam, we must realize that this is no local rebellion arising mainly out of agrarian discontent with an unpopular government, although undoubtedly it contains some of these elements, and in sufficient degree to lend an air of credibility to the argument of those who would so convince us. It is not uncommon to hear claims made that the Liberation Front, -- the political organization of the Viet Cong - and its leadership are drawn from a broad and representative stream of South Vietnamese dissenting opinion, not all of it Communist or even pro-Communist. 000288 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 20 For example, it is sometimes asserted that the leader of the Liberation Front is not a Communist. As far as I can judge, this is largely a matter of speculation, and I have material on which to judge, because he is a shadowy figure seldom seen except by Communist journalists such as 'Wilfrid Burchett. For a political figure who is reported to control the greater part of the country and to command the allegiance of many people, he, no less than his organization, are shadowy presences indeed. As a movement, the Liberation Front has no acknowledged headquarters. Indeed I doubt whether many people even today know the leader’s name. That his opposition to Diem was responsible for his leaving Saigon is indisputable, just as it is in the case of prominent figures in the present South Vietnamese administration headed by Dr. Quat , who was likewise an opponent of Diem but whose opposition did not take the form of joining the Viet Cong. Similarly, it was recently asserted that Hanoi had no more control over the Viet Cong than Stalin had over Mao Tse-Tung. Now, this is a categorical statement made about a relationship, the nature of which deliberately is kept hidden. However, available evidence suggests that precisely the reverse conditions obtain. In this connection the comments of the Vietnam Commission’s legal committee, as quoted in our minority statement of February 13, are of direct relevance. Now, I have gone into the background of some of our experiences on the Commission in this detail because I thought it important for the committee to understand why in a matter of this grave situation simple solutions will not do, attractive though they may appear. I would not want anyone to think that in the last portion of my presentation I have sought to give the impression that our approach to this problem was that of a blind protagonist; it is not that at all. We have a responsibility on the Commission, and I have a responsibility on behalf of the government, to accept the submissions of that Commission or to reject them, and I have seen no reason for taking the latter course. Therefore, I felt it was my duty to at least take this opportunity, the first in some time, to put on the record our assessment of some of the factors; but I would not want this assessment in any way to becloud what I said at the beginning. We appreciate the dangers involved in this situation. We recognize that it would be tragic if this situation in Vietnam were to expand, 000289 �r . Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 21 - if it were to involve more vigorous participation by other countries. I have no reason to believe that there is any evidence that this will be the case, but in this day when war should no longer be an instrument of national policy it is difficult for a country like Canada, subscribing as it does to the United Nations Charter, to see this kind of conflict being pursued. We have to bear in mind the consequence of capitulation or of defeat for either side. We must bear in mind the advantages of proper accommodation, perhaps through negotiations, without any preconditions, so that we might reach a stage of settlement in an area of Asia which vitally effects strategically not only the mainland but some other countries with whom we have the closest Commonwealth association. I repeat, we are doing everything we can do. I asked myself this morning is there anything more that we, as a nation, can do, having in mind our responsibilities and our over-all obligations and interests, to try and bring about a cease-fire. I can only say I do not know of anything more that we can do. But, I do know we are not going to stop doing what we are doing. I regret that the United Nations is not capable of intervening in this situation. This is not because of any act of ours, but there is a constitutional and financial crisis which has crippled its effectiveness in this kind of a situation. The Prime Minister has suggested that if a conference took place and conclusions are reached about an independent or neutral Vietnam, in order to give substance to that conference arrangements must be made to provide guarantees for the observance of the commitments reached. We have the experience of violations of the 1954 Agreement almost right away, infiltrations beginning from the North, with all the consequences that confront the world today. In view of the mistakes in Asia it would not be realistic for the west and for the nations of Asia, to assume that a final settlement can be reached in the absence of some kind of sanction, some kind of guarantee. The Prime Minister suggested that the United Nations normally would be the body to whom would be assigned this responsibility, but for the reasons I have mentioned this is not practical and there would thereby repose on the international community a responsibility to provide that kind of guarantee. This, I think, is a minimum requirement. But, it will not be easy because this kind of a presence depends in the final analysis upon the acceptance of all the parties concerned, and without their consent such an arrangement is just not practical even though it is undoubtedly desirable. 000290 �Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a I'information - 22 - Then, I would like to say we have given consideration to the suggestion of the President of India, Mr. Radhakrishnan. His proposal for an Asian-African force or presence differs from our Prime Minister’s in the fact that while we were thinking of a presence after a conference as a means of guaranteeing the terms of settlement, the President of India was thinking in terms of a presence that would intervene before any conclusions or any settlement was reached. Mr. Chairman, I think this is all I have to say at this point on this subject except, in answer to Mr. Douglas, that I would like to complete my answer and refer you to what I said in the House of Commons on March 8. I said, first of all that while not denying the facts on which the majority report of 1965 is based, the Canadian government believes it presents an oversimplified and misleading impression of the root causes of the dangerous instability in Vietnam. To correct such an impression the Canadian delegation has appended a statement to the majority report in the hope that the special message as a whole might reflect more accurately the full scope of the problem in Vietnam. Then, there is the statement of the Canadian delegation which, in effect, says that we do not dispute the facts as stated in the majority report but that they do not represent the whole story. I would like to quote from paragraph 2 on page 12, which reads as follows: "The Canadian delegation agrees that the situation in Vietnam continues to be dangerously unstable, and events since February 7 in North and South Vietnam have provided a dramatic demonstration of this continuing condition. The delegation believes, however, that the causes of this situation must be seen in context, and, therefore, reviewed in the framework of the Commission’s full range, of responsibilities under the Geneva Agreement. By concentrating on a very limited aspect of the situation in Vietnam, the majority report runs the serious risk of giving the members of the Geneva Conference a distorted picture of the nature of the problem in Vietnam and its underlying causes. In reporting on the events in North and South Vietnam since February 7, the Canadian delegation, therefore, deems it necessary to set these events in their proper perspective." 000291 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Indochina (CDVN) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CDVN00049 Title A name given to the resource Appendix 30 - the Minister speech Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10-Jun-65 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived RG25/R219, 2017-00506-1, Box 3, Pt. 12, "A study of Canadian Policy with respect to the Vietnam Problem," Library and Archives Canada. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource LAC ATIP EA_2023_020914 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Canadian Crown Subject The topic of the resource Vietnam Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Canada Declassified Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource en