Agreement Based on P.R.G's Proposals

Nguyen Van Chi's point that the D.R.V. and the P.R.G. would be made to undermine their own victory can be further understood if the Paris Peace Agreement is compared to the Vietnamese liberation movement's past peace proposals. All the major points of the Provisional Revolutionary Government's Seven-point Peace Proposals of July 1971 were incorporated in the agreement, and many of the fundamental provisions of the agreement can be traced back as far as the D.R.V.'s four point peace proposals of April 1965 and the N.F.L.'s ten point political programme of December 1960. At the time these different proposals were made they were rejected by the American Government spokesmen as being "tantamount to a defeat". The fact that the United States Government and its minion Thieu had to finally sign the Paris Agreement emphasises the point made in the January 29 issue of the authoritive Far Eastern Economic Review that "after eight years of unnecessary bloodshed and cruelty, the United States has finally signed the surrender document".

Independent research in the United States has confirmed the D.R.V. and P.R.G. claims that they have not violated the ceasefire. While we were in Sydney the main peace organisation there, the Association for International Co-operation and Disarmament (A.I.C.D.), received

a copy of a study by NARMIC, an American anti-war research group, which showed that there has not been one documented case of violations by the P.R.G. There is also little evidence for the allegations that the North Vietnamese have violated the ceasefire by 'invading' Cambodia. Writing from Phnom Penh in the April 27 New York Times, Malcolm W. Browne stated:

"Official American sources here said today (April 20) that since the Vietnam ceasefire three months ago, there has been no documented evidence that Vietnamese Communist troops are serving in combat roles in Cambodia.

"One source", Browne continued, "said that the Vietnamese influence on Cambodian insurgent forces was continuing to decline. That assessment has been corroborated in recent weeks by Cambodian officers in the field and by residents of villages in combat areas".