Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part V. B. 2. a.djvu/142



Grouping of States

Bollaert did not abolish the "Federation". He diluted and watered it down and his staff maintain that it is dead. However, at least three "common services" (a euphonistic name for federal services) will exist: finance, immigration, and customs. It is probably an economic fact that if there were no federation in Indo China it would probably be necessary to invent one. Bollaert indicated in his speech that there might be more "common services" than those he specifically mentioned. Didier MICHEL maintained vehemently there would not be; that the concept of the Federation, as proposed by D'Argenlieu, had been completely abandoned. However, the history of 'French administration in Indo China is not one to inspire confidence in such limitations as the French voluntarily place on the activity of their services.

No where is there any mention of the "Surete", that ubiquitous French combination of an FBI (for Europeans) and a Gestapo (for Vietnamese). MICHEL maintained the Surete of the state or states which emerge would be in the hands of the local government. He said that in Laos and Cambodia there was not a single French member of the Surete which was entirely in the hands of the indigenous peoples. He considered that during the early stages of development in Vietnam, there would be two Suretes which would then be merged as gradually French personnel would be eliminated. "You will understand, I believe, that the situation in Tonkin is not such that we can eliminate, at the present time, the French Surete completely without danger to French lives", he said.

There is no good explanation of why Bollaert did not mention the eventual disappearance of the Surete in his speech. Nor is there any good reason why it was left to Premier RAMADIER rather than Bollaert to state in a Paris Press Conference that the government "undertook to eliminate the network of the administrative corps which control or direct the administrative service".

Special Status

Special status will be prepared by the High Commissioner for the minorities of the North and South whose rights have, since the war, assumed an overwhelming "sacredness" to the French. It might be mentioned that the Dutch in Indonesia and, for a time, the British in Burma developed similar sentiments at about, the same time.

The Mols of the south — the Nung, Tho, Meo, Nan, Lolo, Muong, Black and White Thai, among others in the north — will become more or less special wards of the French. Didier MICHEL did not care to elaborate what kind of a status the French proposed for these people. This is the logical development of French policy vis-a-vis minorities set as early as April 9, 1946, as revealed by documents which the Vietnam government

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