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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive III. D. 3.


 * 1.


 * a.

The Geneva Accords — that is, the armistice agreements for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and the Final Declaration of the Conference — were designed primarily to end hostilities and re-establish peace in Indochina, and secondarily to provide conditions conducive to the future independent political development of the three States of the region. The signed armistice agreements were military, the only exception being the Declaration of the Royal Khmer Government, included in the Cambodia armistice, guaranteeing the political rights of all its citizens, The unsigned Geneva Final Declaration deals with a political settlement, but in terms of future events — elections to be held in Laos and Cambodia during 1955 as provided in their constitutions, and elections to reunify Vietnam following consultations within one year (by July, 1955), followed by a national plebiscite within two years (July, 1956). The goal for all of the powers at Geneva, both Western and Communists was a cessation of the war on terms that would permit subsequent progress toward their disparate political objectives in Southeast Asia. All participants desired what might be termed a profitable suspension of the fighting: the Communists wanted an agreement providing time for reconsolidation, and also a political arrangement that would facilitate future expansion; the West was willing to barter, holding out partition and elections in exchange for disengagement of French forces, establishment of the GVN as a viable political organization, and consolidation of the non-Communist Southeast Asian nations in a collective defense arrangement against the further encroachments of Communism.


 * b.

In retrospect, the key political provisions were those that produced the partition of Vietnam, and promised elections within two years. A short summation of the 47 articles and 2 annexes of the "Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet-Nam, July 20, 1954" signed only by the French and the DRV, follows below as a review of the final Geneva position to which, theoretically, all delegates agreed:


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