Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part I.djvu/274

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 Paris, September 12, 1946.

To: The Ambassador

From: George M. Abbott

In accordance with your request, I called last night on Ho Chi-minh and had a conversation lasting an hour.

Ho Chi-minh first discussed his contacts with Americans dating back to his guerrilla warfare against the Japanese when the OSS and Army officers were parachuted into his jungle headquarters and culminating with his talk with you. He emphasized his admiration for the United States and the respect and affection for President Roosevelt which is found even in the remote villages of his country. He referred particularly toward the Philippines and pointed out that it was only natural that his people, seeing and independent Philippines on one side and India about to gain its freedom on the other, should expect France to understand that similar measures for Indochina are inevitable.

He then took up the question of his supposed Communist connections which he, of course, denied. Ho Chi-minh pointed out that there are no Communist ministers in his government and that the Viet-Nam constitution opens with a guarantee of personal liberties and the so-called rights of man and also guarantees the right to personal property. He admits that there are Communists in Annam but claims that the Communist Party as such dissolved itself several months ago.

The President then outlined his relations with France in general and the developments during the Fontainebleau Conference in particular. He pointed out that all of the various provisions of the preliminary agreement of March 6, 1946, had been fulfilled except the provisions regarding a referendum in Cochinchina. The Viet-Nam has its own government, its parliament, its army, and controls its finances. Regarding Cochinchina, however, the French have been unwilling to set a date fro the referendum or to agree to the proposal that a joint Viet-Nam–French commission should be named to arrange for and supervise the referendum. At the same time the French authorities in Indochina have not respected the truce in Cochinchina and have continued military operations against resistance elements loyal to the Viet-Nam.

Ho Chi-minh realizes that the present French Government is a provisional one and that until a French constitution was adopted, the outlines of the French Union