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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive  : military and civilian liaison team was sent to Hanoi and a Chinese counterpart to Saigon. The British in Hanoi at first made little progress with the Chinese but General Gallagher understands they have since made more headway.


 * "The Chinese 60th Army in the south of the Chinese zone and the 93rd Army around Hanoi, both totallingtotaling [sic] some 50 thousand men, have been told to concentrate for removal to Manchuria, but whether they have actually moved out or not General Gallagher does not know. By December, however, the Chinese 53rd Army had begun to come in from Yunnan and would probably provide replacements for the other two Armies.


 * "General Gallagher noted that magnetic mines have not been entirely cleared at least from the northern ports and that the threat provided by these mines has helped and would continue to help keep the French from undertaking large-scale landing operations in that area. He felt that regular rail communications between Saigon and Hanoi might not be opened for another year."

In early 1946, Ho Chi Minh attempted to bring Ngo Dinh Diem into his government, but Diem, whose brother, Ngo Dinh Khoi, had been killed by the Viet Minh, refused. In February, attacks on Ho from both the communist left and the non-Viet Minh nationalists reached such intensity that Ho reportedly proposed his own resignation, and the forming of a state under Bao Dai. The Bao Dai substitution, Ho felt, would not only mollify his internal foes, but improve the DRV's position with the Americans and French: to the U.S. Ho had sent a series of unanswered appeals for internationalizing Vietnam; and with the French, Ho had opened talks trending toward a French-protected, French-recognized, independent DRV.


 * (2)

The National Assembly "elected in January met, on 2 March 1946, and approved the new DRV government at its opening session. Its top echelon of 12 contained only 2 ICP members, but 3 VNQDD and 1 Dong Minh Hoi; Ho remained President, but his Vice President was the leader of the Dong Minh Hoi, and the key portfolios of Interior and Defense went to neutrals.

The new government faced at the outset a crisis in relations with France. Though General Leclerc's "pacification" operations in South Vietnam had fallen short of expectations, French troops and shipping had arrived in Indochina in sufficient quantity for them to contemplate operations in North Vietnam. Simultaneously, the French undertook negotiations with the Chinese, seeking to have them relinquish their occupation of North Vietnam, and with the DRV, seeking to have it accept the reintroduction Rh