Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/164

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  convening the first regular NLF congress within a year. Several postponements obtruded, and the meeting did not take place until February-March 1962. Nonetheless, a Central Committee continued in the interim. to further define NLF purposes; the subsequent statements differed from the 1960 Manifesto mainly on points of emphasis. For example, "reunification of the country" (Point 9 of the Manifesto) was down-played from 1960 through 1963. On the first anniversary of the NLF Manifesto, 20 December 1961, its leaders issued a supplementary series of interim or "immediate action" demands. These called for:

"1. Withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel and weapons from South Vietnam and abolition of the Staley Plan.

2. An end to hostilities.

3. Establishment of political freedoms.

4. Release of political prisoners.

5. Dissolution of the National Assembly and election of a new assembly and president.

6. Ending the resettlement program.

7. Solution of Vietnam's economic problems.

8. Establishment of a foreign policy of non-alignment."

Although "immediate action" wax probably intended to open the way toward formation of a coalition government and thence to ties with Hanoi, there was no mention of reunification; nonetheless, Hanoi in December, 1961, listed NLF objectives as "peace, independence ; democracy, a comfortable life, and the peaceful unification of the Fatherland." One likely reason for the NLF's omission of reunification from "immediate action" was its desire to broaden its base on anti-Diem, anti-U .S. grounds--without alienating anti-Communists who might otherwise support the movement. Again, when the first regular NLF congress met from February 16 to March 3, 1962, the earlier basic objectives of the Front were endorsed, excepting reunfication. The Radio Hanoi broadcast on the congress added "advancing to peaceful unification of the Fatherland" to a list from which this objective was conspicuously absent in the NLF releases. On July 20, 1962, the anniversary of the Geneva Accords, the NLF issued a declaration that:

""The Central Committee of t he National Liberation Front of South Vietnam believes that in the spirit of Vietnamese dealing with Vietnamese solving their own internal affairs, with the determination to put the Fatherland's interest above all else, the forces that oppose U.S. imperialism in South Vietnam will, through mutual concessions, be able to reach a common agreement for united action to serve the people." 170/" Rh