Documents show the Nobel Prize body knew Kissinger’s 1973 Vietnam accord would not bring peace. |
OSLO, 11 january (Reuters) – USA diplomat Henry Kissinger and the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho were fully informed that the Vietnam War would never end. soon, newly released documents show.
Nominations for the Peace Prize have been kept secret for 50 years. Documents related to the Jan. 1 award to Kissinger and Hanoi’s chief negotiator Tho were provided upon request.
This decision shocked many at the time, because at that time USAof national security advisor and the president Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, during the final phase of the 1955-75 Vietnam conflict USAof military played a big role in the strategy.
Stein Toennesson, a professor at the Oslo Institute for Peace Studies, who reviewed the documents, told Reuters: “I was more surprised than ever that the committee could come to such a bad decision.”
Kissinger and Tho reached the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, according to which after Washington had largely ended the offensive and American soldier from South Vietnam after fleeing the war against the Communist North in the face of deteriorating morale and massive anti-war protests military completed the extraction.
But the cease-fire stipulated in the accords was soon ignored on the ground by both North and South Vietnam, which refused to sign the accord, claiming treason because it did not demand the withdrawal of Hanoi’s forces from the South.
The war continued with Northern forces rapidly advancing in the South, now left to fight without critical US support and weakened by high levels of government corruption and disorganization.
Battles only 30 April It ended in 1975 when North Vietnamese forces captured the southern capital, Saigon, and the remaining Americans and local allies began a chaotic and humiliating helicopter evacuation from the roof of the US Embassy.
Le Duc Tho refused the Peace Prize on the grounds that peace had not yet been established. Two of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee – all now dead – protest resigned as Kissinger while accepting the awardofficial did not go to Norway for and later tried in vain to return the award.
Tho, who died in 1990 at the age of 78 generaldiplomat and North Vietnam judge Political He was a member of the Bureau. He oversaw the southern Viet Cong rebellion against the Saigon government from the late 1950s and the decisive 1974–75 offensive by the North that led to subsequent reunification under Hanoi’s rule.
Kissinger, 99 and still a prominent commentator on foreign policy and conflict resolution, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the release of the 1973 Nobel Peace Papers.
INFORMATION THAT MAY PROVE THE AWARD IS UNRELATED
Documents reviewed by Reuters show that Kissinger and Tho were nominated by Norwegian academic John Sanness, a member of the Nobel committee, on January 29, 1973 – two days after the signing of the Paris accords.
Thousands of people can nominate candidates for the award, including certain professors, former Nobel laureates and heads of state.
“My view is that this choice will highlight the positive side of the negotiations leading to an agreement between North Vietnam and the United States that will end the armed conflict,” Sanness said in a letter written in Norwegian.
But Sanness, who died in 1984, added: “I know that only time will tell whether the agreements will matter in practice.”
The nomination letter and the reports on Kissinger and Tho, prepared for the Committee’s discussion, showed that he was “fully aware” that the agreements were “very difficult,” Toennesson said.
“Award to Kissinger, USA, No Peace in South Vietnam way “It was given for taking it out of Vietnam without solving it,” he said. Tho was nominated, he said, because the panel felt it “couldn’t give it to Kissinger alone.”
“He (Kissinger) needed a partner, and then they added Le Duc Tho, about whom they knew little. About (him). report it’s pretty weak,” added Toennesson.
Among the released documents, an original cable from Hanoi states that it was “impossible” for Tho to accept the Peace Prize.
“I will consider accepting this award when the Paris Agreement on Vietnam is respected, the guns are silenced, and peace is truly restored to South Vietnam,” Tho wrote.
In the early 1960s, the United States to Vietnam military intervention was seen as a step to prevent the spread of communism.
Ultimately, the Paris accords sealed the US exit from a war widely reviled at home as a costly and divisive quagmire, but did not silence the guns and negotiations in Vietnam way did not bring peace with
On May 1, 1975, the day after the fall of Saigon, which ended the war, Kissinger tried to return the award in a cable sent from the United States to the Nobel committee, in which “negotiations way he said that the peace we were looking for was broken by force. .
The committee refused to withdraw the award.
Reporting by Gwladys Fuche in Oslo Editing by Terje Solsvik and Mark Heinrich
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Gwladys Fuche
2023-01-12 05:23:27
Source – reuters
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