Indochina Breakthrough: The Opportunity Is There

Indochina is one issue that President Reagan can advance during his last five months in office for the next Administration, despite an apparent breakdown in talks with the Vietnamese to conduct a joint search for the remains of missing American servicemen.

But where there have been breakdowns, there has also been breakthroughs this summer on the two major sticking points--Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia and the prisoner of war/missing-in-action question--that have prevented normalization of American relations with Vietnam. A new American initiative could finally clear the path toward peace in Indochina.

What are the breakthroughs?

On Cambodia, Vietnam announced that it would withdraw 50,000 of its 125,000-man occupying army by the end of 1988.

On the POW/MIA issue, the Vietnamese turned over the remains of 25 American GIs. They agreed to resolve by the end of the year the 70 most compelling “discrepancy” cases of MIAs known to have been prisoners but never released. They also agreed to form a joint team to excavate crash sites.

On other issues, the Vietnamese agreed to permit about 50,000 former re-education camp inmates and their families to immigrate to the United States.

Yet, even as some obstacles are apparently removed, others magically appear. Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur testified before Congress on July 28 that the United States would continue a policy of “diplomatic isolation of Vietnam” until its troops were removed from Cambodia. The next day, President Reagan stated that normalization of relations would depend upon a solution to the POW/MIA issue. Two days later Vietnam announced it was suspending “with great regret . . . temporarily” cooperation on the MIA and other humanitarian issues. When both sides posture, crying “foul,” both sides lose.

The Vietnamese are sly practitioners of political elasticity, always bending but never bowing. The POW/MIA issue is a case in point. As Rep. Chester G. Atkins (D-Mass.) notes, “it’s pretty clear that they have a warehouse, that hundreds of remains are in storage.” The Vietnamese have become adept at bargaining with bones in order to sustain a high-level policy dialogue with U.S. officials, always buying time in the hope that events will shift in their favor. Although 1,763 remain missing in Vietnam, all will never be fully accounted for. Some were lost at sea or blown up.

These issues are intractable only if both sides want them to be. Reagan can set the stage for the next Administration if he seizes on a recent bipartisan proposal by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former POW, and Sen. Larry Pressler (D-S.D.) to establish “special-interest sections” in Hanoi and Washington. Reagan could signal his willingness to adopt this proposal, which would be short of diplomatic relations, if Vietnam follows through on its announced withdrawal from Cambodia and resolves the 70 high-priority discrepancy cases.

In the meantime, Reagan could ease licensing restrictions on private aid agencies to Vietnam, thus signaling American willingness to move toward official aid should Vietnam resolve outstanding differences.

The aid and trade embargo would remain in place and the United States would continue to pressure our allies, including the Japanese, not to expand investment in Vietnam until a Cambodian settlement is achieved.

The Vietnamese are clearly eager to get out of Cambodia. And the prospect of the return to power of the Khmer Rouge, responsible for the murder of more than 1 million Cambodians during the reign of terror from 1975 to 1979, is untenable to almost everyone. The problem is how to prevent it when militarily the Khmer Rouge remain the strongest force.

Ironically, normalization of U.S. relations with Vietnam partly hinges on “a Cambodian settlement,” meaning Vietnamese withdrawal. Yet, currently those Vietnamese troops prevent the Khmer Rouge victory Washington also seeks to avoid.

Reagan again can take several initiatives. He can call for an international conference to establish a framework for an international peacekeeping force to supervise an accelerated Vietnamese withdrawal, disarmament of the various Cambodian factions, elections and the establishment of an international reconstruction fund for Cambodia. The United States can also expand its currently projected $5-million aid program to the non-communist resistance to include training in public administration and other skills that will be needed by the new government.

Quietly, the United States can work with the Thais to persuade them to cut off arms deliveries to the Khmer Rouge and open their refugee camps to international control, freeing the thousands of refugees held captive within Thailand. The United States can work with other concerned nations to press the Chinese to cut off all aid to the Khmer Rouge.

A solution to difficult foreign-policy problems can be forever elusive if absolute answers are the only ones deemed acceptable. Peace with honor is possible but only if tempered by both sides with compassion.