Busy day in 1969. As it has been the past several months, Vietnam Peace Talks are taking center stage.
The United States and South Vietnam called on the Communists today to begin serious discussions of a mutual troop withdrawal from South Vietnam. They got a flat rejection and a new Viet Cong attack on the Nixon administration as “perfidious.” Tran Buu Kiem, “foreign minister” in the government of the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong), said the peace plan mentioned by Secretary of State William P. Rogers was “make believe.” Kiem rejected the plea for discussion of troops withdrawals and a restoration of a neutral Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam. His statements made it clear there would be no appreciable progress at today’s session of the Paris peace talks. Kiem commented on the administration’s program for a settlement of the Vietnam War and reports of secret talks outside the formal peace conference.
“The Nixon administration is trying to make believe that it has a ‘program for the peaceful settlement’ of the Vietnam problem,” Kiem said. “It continues to spread about ‘private meetings.’ this is but a perfidious maneuver of the United States aimed at deceiving and calming down public opinion.
Meanwhile, rocket fire and jet aircraft continue to disturb the peace of the Middle East as tough Israeli retaliation matches every lethal commando raid. ‘King Hussein, conferring in Washington, warns that the world might soon “lose the chance” for peace in this crucial region. Yet, a certain limited optimism can be found in the high offices of the Nixon administration. This cautious hope is certainly not founded events in the Middle East Itself, nor on any new attitudes on the part of Arab and Israeli, but on what is regarded here as “progress” in the four- talks now going forward in New York with a greater degree of unanimity than apparently had been expected.
And finally, Flood fighters surrendered an 18-square-block area of Sioux Falls, S.D., to the surging Big Sioux River today after a nightlong battle to plug a 100-foot break in a dike in the city’s Riverside district. “We dumped in more than 100 tons of rock, we threw in car bodies and anything else we could lay our hands on,” said Joe Vanderloo, Minnehaha County Civil Defense director, shortly before daybreak. “But it was undermining faster than we could fill it up.’ “After eight hours we finally gave up,” he said.
And while the Paris Peace talks were lurching along, that’s a little of what happened this April 10, 1969 from Mutual Radio.
