ABSTRACT
The effort to negotiate a settlement of the Vietnam War was one of the longest, most frustrating, and controversial experiences in US diplomacy. If the North Vietnamese could be more flexible on that point, Henry Kissinger urged, they would find the president eager to reach a negotiated settlement than at that moment. Kissinger viewed the draft as a significant breakthrough. As he later told the press, the North Vietnamese government dropped their demand for a coalition government which would absorb all existing authority. In Vietnamese the phrase "administrative structure" implied that such a body would have actual governmental authority. Pham Van Dong began the interview with references to the failure of Vietnamization and the great victory that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam 1972 Easter military offensive symbolized; he described the United States from that point on as being forced to liquidate its commitments to Saigon.
