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PRIORITY

SENT DEPARTMENT SECTO 633, RPTD INFO PARIS 80, SAIGON 51

Nguyen Huu Chau of Vietnamese delegation handed USDEL copy of note which was given to French delegation today. He said French requested contents be kept secret for moment, and that French not aware copy given to this delegation. Following is unofficial translation:

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Just as the French High Command in Indochina evacuated, without fighting and in spite of the strongest protests by President Ngo Dinh Diem, zones vital for the defense and the existence of a free Vietnam, the delegation of the Vietnamese National Government learned only by the papers and by the messages which were sent to it yesterday, July 16, that the French delegation appears already to have accepted abandoning to the Viet Minh all of that part situated north of the eighteenth parallel and that the delegation of the Viet Minh might claim an even more advantageous demarcation line.

The National Government of Vietnam has also been left in complete ignorance of the proposals on the fate of Vietnam made by the French Government to the American and British Governments, particularly at the meeting in Paris.

The delegation of the State of Vietnam must express its surprise at this situation.

This delegation finds it hard to understand that peace in Vietnam is being negotiated without previously consulting with its qualified representatives.

The de facto partition which seems to have been adopted from the outset by the delegations of France and of the Viet Minh--at discussions bearing only on the materialization of the partition--does not take any account of the unanimous will for national unity of the Vietnamese people. RhRh