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

This first official indication for public consumption of U.S. refusal to join in a settlement contrary to our interests, was coupled with a comment by Dulles on the possibility of partition. In views that would change later, Dulles said he did not see how partition could be arranged with the fighting not confined to any single area. Although he did not actually rule out partition, he made it clear that the U.S. would agree only to a division equivalent to a communist surrender, one that would place all the communist troops in a small regroupment area out of harm's way. But that arrangement "might not be acceptable to them," he said coyly.


 * 3.


 * a.

The test of U.S. policy came May 5 when the French informed Washington of the proposals they intended to make in the first round of talks. The proposals included a separation of the Vietnam situation of "civil war" from the communist aggressions in Cambodia and Laos; a ceasefire supervised by international authority, to be followed by political discussions aimed at free elections; the regrouping of regular forces of the belligerents into defined zones upon signature of a cease-fire agreement; the disarming of all irregular forces (., the Viet Minh guerrillas); and a guarantee of the agreements by "the States participating in the Geneva Conference."


 * b.

Once more, the Chiefs, in reviewing the proposals, fell back on the Korean experience, which they said demonstrated the certainty that the communists would violate any armistice controls, including those supervised by an international body. An agreement to refrain from new military activities during armistice negotiations would be a strong obstacle to communist violations; but the communists, the JCS concluded, would never agree to such an arrangement. The Chiefs therefore urged that the U.S. not get trapped into backing a French armistice proposal that then could be taken up by the communists and exploited to bind us to a cease-fire. The only way to get satisfactory results was through military success, and since the Navarre Plan was no longer tenable, the next best alternative was not to associate the U.S. with any cease-fire in advance of a satisfactory political settlement. The first step, the Chiefs believed, should be the conclusion of a settlement that would "reasonably assure the political and territorial integrity of the Associated States..."; only thereafter should a cease-fire be entertained.


 * c.

As previously, the Joint Chiefs' position became U.S. policy, in this case with only minor emendations. The President, reviewing the Rh