Office of the Historian

230. Telegram From the Ambassador in Vietnam (Reinhardt) to the Department of State1

Saigon, July 16, 1955—2 p.m.

241. Reference: Deptel 130 repeated information Paris 174.2

1.
Have just obtained from Foreign Minister Vu Van Mau latest draft received Diem declaration which it is planned to broadcast by radio at 1800 hours this afternoon, July 16.3 This final draft is, I believe, the best that can be hoped for in the circumstances. British Ambassador and French Political Counselor Cerles, to whom I have shown text, agree. Mau said to me that Cabinet had worked on it all last night in effort to meet as far as possible British desires. I limited my suggested changes to recommending that paragraphs numbered 2 and 3 be placed further down in the text between paragraphs 5 and 6 and to recommending that the word “examining” in paragraph numbered 7 be changed to some such term as “considering.” Mau promised to bring these suggestions immediately to Diem’s attention. I am seeing Prime Minister later this afternoon and will endeavor to obtain his acceptance thereto.4
2.

Text follows. Numbers added for reference purposes.

Countrymen,

1.
The National Government has on several occasions emphasized the value it has always attached to the defense of the country’s unity and of true democracy.
2.
We did not sign the Geneva accords.
3.
We are in no manner bound by these accords reached against the will of the Vietnamese people.
4.
And while our policy is one of peace, no maneuver from any quarter will cause us to stray from our goal: the unity of our country, but unity in freedom and not in slavery. Serving the national cause, we struggle more than ever for territorial reunification. We do not reject the principle of elections as the peaceful and democratic way to achieve such unity.
5.
However though elections constitute one of the bases of true democracy, they can have no justification unless they are genuinely free.
6.
But, faced with the regime of oppression practiced by the Viet Minh, we remain skeptical as to the possibility of obtaining free electoral conditions in the north.
7.
We shall not miss any opportunity that would permit the unification of our territory in freedom. But there can be no question of our examining any sort of proposal from the Viet Minh if we are not given proof that they place the higher interests of the national community above those of communism; if they do not renounce terrorism and totalitarian methods; if they do not cease to violate their commitments, as they have done in preventing our countrymen from the north to go to the south, in recently again attacking, in concert with the Communist Pathet Lao, the friendly state of Laos.
8.
It is upon us, nationalists, that the mission devolves of reunifying our country, under conditions that are most democratic and effective to guarantee our independence.
9.
The free world is with us, of this we are assured.
10.
I am certain that I truthfully express the thought of all when I solemnly affirm our will to resist communism.
11.
To those who live beyond the 17th Parallel, I ask them to have confidence.
12.
With the agreement and the support of the free world, the National Government will bring you independence in freedom.”
Reinhardt
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 751G.00/7–1655. Secret; Niact. Repeated for information to Paris and Geneva.↩
  2. In this telegram, July 13, the Department authorized Reinhardt, at his discretion, to inform Diem that any statement before July 18 by the South Vietnamese Government made on the question of elections would reinforce U.S. tactics in discouraging the Soviet Union from raising Indochina at the upcoming Summit Conference. Reinhardt was to add that he was not trying to force Diem to accept the Geneva formula for elections. (Ibid., 396.1–GE/7–1355)↩
  3. This statement was broadcast over Saigon radio. It was later published in French and English by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Vietnam. For the text as published, see Cameron, Viet-Nam Crisis, vol. I, pp. 383–384.↩
  4. According to the version published in Cameron, Diem replaced “examining” with “considering”, but did not move paragraphs 2 and 3 between 5 and 6.↩