POSITIONS OF RUSSIA AND CHINA

In this exchange of views, which I hope may result in some benefit, I would like to submit to you that Vietnam is not the big factor here. The big factor is the equation between the Big Three Powers involved there.

I was impressed that you quoted, impressed with the statement which you quoted of a minister, a foreign minister, of an Iron Curtain country which he made to you, to wit, that the biggest problem in the world today was to bring the Red Chinese to the acceptance of the principle of peaceful coexistence. I do not recall whether you quoted him as saying it was the biggest problem or one of the biggest problems.

Secretary RUSK. I think he said the biggest problem.

Senator GORE. I would agree that is one of the biggest problems. I am not sure it is not the biggest problem, viewed in the long run. What is your reflection upon this statement of this foreign minister? Secretary RUSK. I think that the doctrine of an unlimited world revolution by militant means is a doctrine that is so incompatible with the peace of the world and the system of international society that we are trying to build on the United Nations Charter, that it is certainly one of the largest questions, if not the largest question. Senator GORE. I agree.

Now, if that be the case, the equation between the three big powers, the United States, Russia, and China, is the important element involved in this predicament, as Senator Church described it.

In the formulation of policy, I would urge you to urge upon the President the prime consideration of those factors rather than the loss of face or other factors that might be involved with respect to Vietnam proper.

This, it seems to me, is where the danger of a nuclear war rests. I would be most reluctant to see this country play brinksmanship with nuclear war. I would not wish to approve such a policy.

Secretary RUSK. Senator, those are matters that are taken fully and earnestly into account.

I do not think that I would agree, and I do not think you were saying, that the shape of the world should be determined by these three great powers at the expense of the interests and the rights of the other nations.

Senator GORE. No, I did not say that.

Secretary RUSK. No, you did not say that. But the issues that you mentioned are fully taken into account in all of our considerations. Senator GORE. You recognize then that the equation between the three large powers involved here will determine whether or not there is to be a global war?

Secretary RUSK. I would not limit it to that equation. I think that the problem of general war is somewhat more complicated than that. But this is a very important part of the problem.

Senator GORE. A war between the United States and North Vietnam is not a global war. We are having that one now.

Secretary RUSK. That is correct.

Senator GORE. So if it is to be escalated into a world conflagration, it is not with the power of Vietnam so to escalate it. Such an escalation would either have to come from us through an attack upon or

confrontation with or hostilities with a world power or an action on their part to engage us in hostilities.

Secretary RUSK. Yes, I was not thinking specifically of Vietnam. I was just reluctant, as a general matter, to say that the problem of a general war is solely that among those three that you mentioned.

Senator GORE. Well, I thank you for that. If you will pass that along I would appreciate it.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Pell.

Secretary RUSK. I have an urgent appointment at 1 o'clock that I should keep if I can.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have one question? Then we will adjourn and let the Secretary go.

Senator PELL. Right.

UNITED NATIONS ROLE

In brief, what would be the reason why we have not taken this to the United Nations or if we have not, why has not some other small nation under the charter taken this situation with respect to peace to the Security Council?

Secretary RUSK. The problem of southeast Asia has been before the United Nations on occasion, and in a most formal sense in August 1964.

The matter is discussed regularly among the members of the Security Council and, particularly, the permanent members with the Secretary General. The question is whether formal consideration there, as opposed to quiet exploration, is a better way to get on with the possibilities of opening up a peaceful settlement. Thus far it has been the opinion of those in New York primarily responsible for this that a formal meeting of the Security Council on this would result in a bitter debate with no outcome and, therefore, the parties as well as the Secretary General might better be left free to explore other ways of getting at it.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Secretary, I understand you had an appointment, so we will excuse you.

I am going to put in the record at your request a telegram from Mr. Lodge.

Secretary RUSK. Yes.

Senator PELL. I have a question for Mr. Bell. I wonder if he could stay.

Mr. BELL. I can stay.

The CHAIRMAN. Secretary, you may go, we will have just a few more things.

Senator GORE. Senator Clark would like two articles put in the record.

(The documents referred to follow:)

SIXTY PERCENT OF DELTA PEOPLE SEEN AS RED ADHERENTS

(By Ward Just, Washington Post foreign service)

(Washington Post, Sunday Jan. 23, 1966)

SONDONG, SOUTH VIETNAM, January 22.-South from Saigon, the delta country lies flat and rich with soil pushed 2,500 miles by the Mekong River. The delta, where 5 million peasants harvest three-quarters of the nation's rice, is the great prize of the war in Vietnam.

There are 13 provinces in the delta, and the most prosperous and populous of these is Kienhoa, with 620,000 people. Sixty percent of them, at a conservative estimate, give their allegiance to the Vietcong.

In Kienhoa, there are 150 villages and 854 hamlets.

One of these is Sondong.

In Sondong, 2,600 Vietnamese-mostly Buddhists-live quietly under the protection of an army outpost 2 miles away. The last time the village was hit was 2 months ago, when one Government soldier was wounded and two Vietcong were killed.

IN TWILIGHT ZONE

Sondong is one of many delta towns that live in a twilight zone. They are controlled by the Government by day and the Vietcong by night. The village chief, a 36-year-old former army officer named Do Hun Minh, admitted that at night the Vietcong often entered the village, propagandized, collected taxes (rice and coconuts), and recruited men.

By day, the Government and U.S. Operations Mission (USOM) work to crack the closed society in the Sondongs of the delta, a society whose roots are locked in religion, tradition, and the legacy of French colonialism.

There are very many points of departure. One official cites land reform, another industrialization, a third reform of the military. Richard Burnham, the USOM province representative in Kienhoa, cites education.

Minh flipped the leaves of a newly completed chart and explained through an interpreter that only four village youngsters since the year 1950 have been to high school. No youngster in the history of the village has ever attended college.

"The Vietnamese government continues to support an exclusive educational system in a revolutionary war," says Burham. "All this is the preservation of privilege. It is madness and until it is changed into an American type egalitarian educational system, most of our other efforts will be marginal."

Those other efforts, in Sondong and throughout Kienhoa Province, are considerable. USOM pumps about half a million dollars a year into Kienhoa, arranging for medical teams and technical assistance, and building dams, schoolrooms, a potable water system, an orphanage, three fish markets, two electricity systems.

But knowledgable Americans here say that the Vietcong still offer the only outlet for a bright boy from the villages. The static nature of Sondong assures that there is no legitimate route out of the rice paddy.

BARRED AS OFFICERS

The rural children cannot be officers, administrators or district chiefs. When a surgeon with 3 years of medical training at the University of Hanoi defected from the Vietcong last year, he was obliged to go to work operating a radio at USOM headquarters in Kienhoa Province.

The Saigon administration found his medical qualifications insufficient for practice, and he could not go to the University of Saigon Medical School because, like the 19th century Russian court, the language there is French and he did not speak French. This is in a province which has 5 doctors to serve 620,000 people. There are varying estimates of the degree to which the revolution of rising expectations, as Washington puts it, has seized the people of the delta.

An American official in Saigon who has studied the delta says that youngsters are raised "to believe that the ultimate in life is to have your own land and not owe any money. Many of the people, particularly the Cochin Chinese, are nature lovers, in the Rousseauian sense.

But many are not, and they are the ones successfully proselytized by the Vietcong.

"You ask them," says the American, "why they don't plant two crops a year instead of one. They tell you that they don't need two crops a year.

NEEDS ARE FEW

"You mention that they do not have a sewing machine, a radio, or a Lambretta. "They tell you that they don't need these things, although you get a little weakening when you mention the Lambretta."

In Sondong, the limbo world of the war in Vietnam, the sense is of all the forces of the 20th century coming together. The neatness of the paddies and the coconut groves, from which 104,000 liters of rice and 28 metric tons of coconuts are harvested each month, belie the insistence of the struggle.

The thatched-roof huts, as carefully plotted and arranged as a Japanese Buddhist rock garden, appear the same as in old lithographs available in Saigon.

The old people, many of whom practice Confucianism, see no need to change. Many of their offspring agree, but many do not. The Government has made

no gestures to change.

When the American planes came to defoliate Vietcong strongholds in the province, there were two demonstrations in the province. Defoliation is something farmers understand.

Minh, the village chief whose pay is about $22 a month (less than a South Vietnamese army private), flips the leaves of the chart on the wall of the village office. He says that of 1,171 people over the age of 18, 414 are landowners.

MOST IN VIETCONG AREA

But most of the land is in Vietcong territory. It is simply "worked"—no one knows by whom, and it is uncertain if the land is ever reclaimed from the Vietcong who will have title to it.

Minh said that most of the Vietcong in the village territory had moved out along the canals and rivers which lace the land. But it is still a war, and as Minh explained the charts in the wet heat of midafternoon artillery fire could be heard a mile away.

What was Minh's biggest problem?

"Irrigation," he said. "The problem is irrigation. We want to rebuild the

canal."

But the war?

How was the war going? Who was winning? Was the Government winning the allegiance, the hearts and minds of the people? "I have no idea about the war," Minh said with a slight smile. very small unit.”

"I belong to a

ONLY A FOURTH OF SOUTH VIETNAM IS UNDER CONTROL OF SAIGON REGIME (By John T. Wheeler, Associated Press staff writer)

(Evening Star, January 25, 1966)

SAIGON, SOUTH VIETNAM.-Three-fourths of South Vietnam is controlled by the Vietcong-or by nobody.

This is the opinion of authoritative sources who have watched the Saigon Government's grip weaken in the provinces, even after the arrival of nearly 200,000 U.S. troops. The situation throws a big shadow over hopes for a permanent cease-fire and plans to move the country toward democracy.

These sources say the Government today controls less than a quarter of the land-controls it, that is, in the sense of having Government executive channels working in all respects.

Some U.S. officials don't think this is too important. They argue that much of the area controlled by the Vietcong or the "no man's land" is jungle or mountainous territory where few if any people live. Since the Saigon regime controls the cities, more than half the population is in areas held by the Government.

ONLY TWO PROVINCES

Only 2 of Vietnam's 45 provinces are considered wholly under Government control-Gia Dinh, which surrounds Saigon, and An Giang, center of the Hoa Hao religious sect which is determinedly anti-Communist.

Even in some areas listed in the Government column, the Vietcong underground operates freely, and the chance of ambush always haunts Government and American troops. Saigon police have battled with Vietcong military units on the very outskirts of the capital. Two district capitals, roughly equivalent to county seats in the United States, have been abandoned in the last month because of overwhelming Vietcong pressure. They were within 30 miles of U.S. Marine beachheads, but that didn't save Minh Long and Hiep Duc.

Viewing their past gains and the inability so far of the allied forces to trap Vietcong or North Vietnamese forces for a major showdown fight in the field, the Communists must feel fairly confident.

It is against this background that hopes for an early peace or permanent cease-fire must be weighed.

Although harried by air strikes and American and Vietnamese operations through their base camp areas, the Vietcong still continue to strike with a fanatical spirit.

The Saigon Government is determined that there will be no peace talks that would concede Vietcong control as it stands or that would limit the Government

to the areas it now holds. Hanoi's reluctance to negotiate appears to show optimism that the Vietcong will strengthen its position.

Assessing the situation, reliable sources say that the Government and the Vietcong each control about one-quarter of the country. The other half is disputed territory.

The Government foothold in these disputed areas usually amounts to scattered outposts that protect little more than their own barbed wire. It is the Vietcong who usually are able to move into the villages at night to hammer home their propaganda. Government village chiefs and police often spend the night at the district town headquarters building behind barbed wire.

Although Government troops sweep and resweep these contested areas, the Vietcong quickly return when the Saigon soldiers go back to their barracks. Government control is weakest in the northernmost 1st Army Corps area. In each province it is pretty much restricted to the capital plus varying sized areas of surrounding countryside. U.S. Marines hold a beachhead at Chu Lai but no large population is involved. The other Marine bases are at Da Nang and just south of the old imperial capital of Hue.

Several district towns besides Hiep Duc and Minh Long have been abandoned in the past 18 months and in others Government forces are hanging on by their teeth. There is some fear that Qung Ngad Province, controlled by the Viet Minh during the French war and with strong separatist tendencies as well, might turn from the Saigon Government. If this happened, the Vietcong might move in and use this as a governmental base camp. But the difficulties and dangers in attempting to pull off such a coup are immense for the Communists.

The 2d Army Corps area, which includes most of the highlands, is the current theater of operations for North Vietnamese regulars but they have been lying low lately. Coastal Binh Dinh and Phu Yen were former Viet Minh strongholds.

BETTER IN SOUTH

The situation in the southern part of the area is better than in the north, where some of the biggest battles of the war, including the American clash with North Vietnamese regulars in the Ia Drang Valley, took place.

In the III Corps area, the main center of Government control is shaped roughly like an arrowhead with Saigon at the base and the sea at the tip.

Much has been made for years over efforts to pacify Long An and Hau Nghia Provinces, just west and northwest of Saigon. Little or no progress has been made. In fact, the Government has lost ground in some areas.

In the IV Corps area, the delta battleground, Government control is spotty at

best, outside the provinces dominated by the militant Hoa Hao.

A U.S.

Many Vietcong in the delta have followed guerrilla lives for 20 years. officer once said: "There is only one way to convert a Communist of 20 years' standing. Shoot him."

American and South Vietnamese hopes are pinned on expected conventional military showdowns with the Vietcong and North Vietnamese that will brighten the present picture. At present, the showdowns continue largely to be when and where the Communists want them. Military sources say there is little prospect that the situation will change, given the nature of a guerrilla war.

TELEGRAM FROM AMBASSADOR LODGE

The CHAIRMAN. For the record I want to say that there is a letter here dated January 27 from the Secretary of State requesting that I put a telegram in from Ambassador Lodge.

I want to call attention to the second paragraph in the telegram, and I quote:

A vote for the appropriation is thus an utterly indispensable act if one supports U.S. policy in Vietnam.

That was one of the reasons why I asked that question earlier as to how a vote on this would be interpreted. The whole telegram will go in the record.

(The document referred to follows:)