COSVN Party Current Affairs Committee Guidance on Stepping up Struggle Activities Demanding that the U.S. and the Puppets Implement our Post-Paris Agreement Proposals

The Paris Agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam was signed in January 1973, but the Americans and the puppets blatantly violated the agreement. They repeatedly sent troops in to attack and occupy our liberated zones. In the light of this reality, we resolutely fought for our demand that the Americans and the puppets must strictly implement the terms of the Agreement. During the meetings held to discuss the implementation of the Paris Agreement, our side constantly put forward logical and appropriate ideas but the Americans and their puppets always sought ways to avoid these ideas and instead sought to prolong these discussions.

As a result of our resolute struggle and of the warm support of international public opinion, on 13 June 1973 our side, the Americans, and the puppets signed a joint statement that was based on our fundamental proposals. Then, on 28 June 1973, our delegation in Paris submitted a six-point proposal. The six points were: ceasefire; exchange of detained civilian personnel; guaranteeing the people’s right to freedom and democracy; the formation of the National Council of National Reconciliation; General elections; and the problem of armed forces.

Immediately after we achieved these results at the negotiating table, on 30 June 1973 the COSVN Party Current Affairs Committee issued an announcement that requested all levels of command and all branches to launch another powerful struggle phase that was to focus on three urgent issues: ceasefire; exchanged of detained civilian personnel; and guaranteeing the people right to freedom and democracy.

According to the announcement, the goals of this struggle phase were as follows:

-To make sure that our entire Party and that the entire civilian population fully understand the significance of the joint statement so that we can use it to push our movement forward, and at the same time to ensure that everyone realizes that our six point proposal was not just an attack against the enemy at the conference table but that it is also a political attack by our entire army and our entire population throughout South Vietnam aimed at making the enemy increasingly weaker, more isolated, and more passive and on the defensive.

-In parallel with a broad-ranging propaganda campaign about our attacks at the conference table and the successes that we had achieved at the conference table, we also need to launch a powerful struggle movement among the popular masses.

-To continue to develop and exploit the combined strength of our three-pronged attack [military, political, and military proselyting] in close coordination with our legal struggle; we have to incite mass movements in all three zones [mountain jungles, rural lowlands, urban areas] and resolutely conduct struggles of all types, because only then can we force the enemy to implement the terms of the agreement that he had signed.

-To strengthen our military proselyting operations and our proselyting operations targeted on puppet government personnel so that the enemy troops and government officials who are already frightened and confused in order to cause even greater disintegration of the puppet army, to render the puppet government’s apparatus of repression to lose its effectiveness, and to incite the revolutionary zeal of the masses to rise to even higher levels.

[Translator’s Note: This document can also be found in the first edition of Lich Su Bien Nien Xu Uy Nam Bo va Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam (1954-1975) [Historical Chronicle of the Cochin China Party Committee and the Central Office for South Vietnam, 1954-1975] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2002), 966-967.]