Britain complained at Vietnam bombing
LONDON - Britain complained bitterly to the United States in December 1972 over being kept in the dark when Washington
suddenly resumed mass bombing raids over North Vietnam, documents reveal.
"Is it possible for you to have a word with Kissinger and suggest tactfully that his friends are due some further explanation if their
sympathy and understanding is to be maintained?" a top aide to Prime Minister Edward Heath wrote to British ambassador to
Washington Lord Cromer on December 29. Cromer replied promptly that he had telephoned U.S. President Richard Nixon's
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who had asked the British government to make no comment for three days, when everything
would become clear.
Cromer said he suspected that the request for silence might have something to do with a resumption of peace talks. Talks between
the United States and North Vietnam had broken down in the middle of December, both sides accusing each other of negotiating in
bad faith, and the United States had mounted an 11-day bombing campaign against Hanoi.
True to Kissinger's message, peace talks resumed and resulted on January 27 in a peace deal under which there was to be an
immediate ceasefire, the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and the despatch of an international peacekeeping force.
U.S. troops pulled out and handed over to the South Vietnamese army, but fighting continued, no peacekeepers appeared, and the
war ended in April 1975 with a North Vietnamese victory.
Reuters - April 29, 2003
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