Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/239

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 of our country is still meeting with difficulties and hardships, but we are confident that the Vietnamese people will certainly triumph in the complete liberation of our country from the US-Diem clique's dictatorial yoke just as they had gloriously succeeded in their valiant struggle in the past. The American imperialists and their lackeys, who are being opposed and isolated, surely will not be able to avoid the ignominious defeat of those who go counter to the march of history." 191/

Ho Chi Minh's May Day speech of 1959 opened with an encomium from the Soviet Union, China, and other socialist powers who were promoting the movement for national liberation in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. According to the Hanoi Radio report, Ho pointed out "that the earnest desire of the Vietnamese people from North to South is peace and national reunification. On orders from the U.S. imperialists the South Vietnamese authorities are sabotaging the implementation of the Geneva Accords and strangling all democratic freedom of the southern people." Ho concluded on the note that:

""Under the leadership of the Viet-Nam Lao Dong Party and the government, all our people will further strengthen solidarity and unity of mind with other countries in the socialist camp, headed by the great Soviet Union. . . [and] strengthen solidarity within the national united front... By so doing the north of our country will steadily advance toward socialism as a strong basis toward victory in the struggle for national reunification.""

On 4 May 1959, the official DRV newspaper declared that:

""The glorious South Vietnamese people surely will not remain with folded arms before the continuous and cruel repressive acts of the U.S.-Diem clique. The Vietnamese people have many times compe lled their enemies to pay for their bloody crimes. The U.S .-Diem clique has by its own will contracted a big debt of blood toward the Vietnamese people, and have dug their own graves.""

The foregoing were issued while the Lao Dong Party conducted the Fifteenth Plenum (Enlarged Session) of its Central Committee in Hanoi. The session featured speeches on foreign and domestic programs, but it is fairly certain that a Plenum of the Lao Dong Central Committee is not a debating society nor a parliament -- decisions were not reached there, they were presented.

On 13 May 1959, Hanoi broadcast in English the communique of the Lao Dong Party Central Committeej on the Plenum, a bellicose tone was unmistakable: Rh