Vietnam celebrates anniversary of US military withdrawal
Vietnam celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accord, which brought an end to direct US
military intervention in the country after more than a decade of fighting.
The agreement was signed in the French
capital on January 27, 1973, by the United
States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the
Viet Cong guerrilla movement fighting the
Saigon regime and its American backers.
"The Paris conference and Paris Accord set a
glorious landmark in Vietnamese history,"
Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien wrote in
Monday's edition of the ruling Communist
Party's Nhan Dan newspaper.
It forced "the Americans to stop the war and
their intervention in Vietnam, putting an end to
their destructive war in the north and forcing
them to withdraw their invading army from
southern Vietnam," he added.
The agreement was the result of nearly five
arduous years of talks, most of them held in top secret, between US president Richard Nixon's national
security adviser Henry Kissinger and his opposite number Le Duc Tho.
It was preceded by the devastating Christmas 1972 bombing campaign of the densely populated
Haiphong-Hanoi corridor, which killed more than 1,500 civilians and sparked a wave of condemnation across
the globe.
The pact stipulated an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional withdrawal of all US troops in Vietnam and a
cessation to North Vietnam's infiltration of men and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and
Cambodia.
The signatories also agreed that the future of South Vietnam would be settled through peaceful political
means and that all prisoners of war (POW) would be released.
However, the accord, largely ignored by both sides, did not immediately bring peace to Vietnam and the
guerrilla war in the south continued.
It was not until April 30, 1975 that the South Vietnamese regime finally capitulated to the communist north.
For Vietnam though the agreement marked the beginning of the end to over a decade of conflict with US
forces.
"Although fighting against an enemy that possessed the mightiest economic strength and military force,
Vietnam utilized an appropriate strategy, which was the combination between fighting and negotiating, to
win a complete victory," the state-run Vietnam News Agency said in an editorial.
Agence France Presse - January 27, 2003.
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