Former South Vietnam president dies in U.S. exile
BOSTON - Nguyen Van Thieu, the penultimate president of South Vietnam who led his
nation until just days before it fell to its bitter enemy North Vietnam, died at the weekend in Boston. He
was 78.
``I can confirm that he died at 10:30 Saturday night,'' said Jerry Berger, spokesman for the Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Berger said he could not comment on the cause of death and family members could not be reached for
comment.
Vietnam's state-run Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper, published in Thieu's former seat of
power, Saigon -- now Ho Chi Minh City -- said in a brief article that the former head of ''the Saigon
puppet regime'' had died of a brain hemorrhage.
Vietnam's communist government, whose forces took Saigon on April 30, 1975, nine days after Thieu
stepped down, has yet to comment directly on his death.
But Thanh Nien indicated its likely response by referring to unproven allegations surrounding Thieu's
flight into exile in 1975. ``He used to call for people to 'die for Saigon', then fled abroad, bringing along
dozens of tonnes of gold,'' it said.
Elected in 1967, Thieu was for eight years the cornerstone of doomed U.S. policy in South Vietnam
during the bloodiest period of the Vietnam War. He stood at the center of the storm of world affairs,
seldom off the front pages of newspapers chronicling the agony of the conflict.
Dictatorial style
He ruled with a tough, some said dictatorial style. A free-market capitalist, he advocated fierce
resistance to the communist North Vietnamese, bitterly opposing any concessions even as his army
crumbled under sustained assault.
His communist enemies labeled him a ``traitor, a murderer and a seller of his people's blood.''
Ironically, as a young man, Thieu briefly helped the Viet Minh, the Communist-nationalist precursors of
the Viet Cong, fight the French colonial powers in his native province. But he said he stopped as soon
as he realized their communist aims.
While president, he consistently rejected any idea of a coalition government including neutralists and
Communists.
For him, the surrender of Saigon was the total repudiation of all his efforts during the war. He had
always claimed to want peace, but never in the way it finally came.
Thieu reluctantly stepped down as president on April 21, 1975, when it became obvious his refusal to
do so would result in an assault on Saigon.
On April 30, a new president, Duong Van (Big) Minh, surrendered the city unconditionally and the
communists claimed their greatest prize with almost no bloodshed. They renamed the former South
Vietnamese capital Ho Chi Minh City, after their late communist icon.
Big Minh died in California in August this year and was praised by Hanoi for helping to reduce war
losses by surrendering Saigon. It expressed regret that he had been unable to return home before his
death in exile.
Bitter in defeat
Thieu was bitter in defeat, blaming his one-time patrons the Americans who, he said, had been ``blind
and deaf'' to North Vietnamese violations of Paris peace agreements that took the last U.S. troops out
of South Vietnam in 1973.
When the accords were announced, he warned his people to be vigilant ``because peace does not
mean a long-lasting peace. I tell you that I believe this is solely a cease-fire agreement, no more, no
less.''
After he stepped down, Thieu largely disappeared from public life. He fled Saigon for Taiwan just
ahead of North Vietnamese forces, but quickly moved to Britain, where he lived near London. He
stayed for years before eventually settling in a suburb of Boston.
Thieu was born into a Buddhist family on April 5, 1923 in the poor southern coastal province of Ninh
Thuan. A Buddhist, he converted to Roman Catholicism when he married a doctor's daughter from the
fertile Mekong Delta south of Saigon.
The son of a small landowner, he was educated in Hue, Vietnam's cultural and intellectual capital on the
banks of the Perfume River. The city, with its ancient palaces and parks, was heavily damaged during
the North's Tet Offensive of 1968.
He attended a military academy and joined the French-backed army fighting the Viet Minh. After
independence, which followed the 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, he held a number of field and
staff posts in the South Vietnamese military.
During the confusion of the mid-1960s, when South Vietnam was wracked by coups and
counter-coups, General Thieu became commander of the military region embracing the Mekong Delta
and came to the notice of U.S. military and civilian officials.
In June 1965, he was named chairman of a 10-member military directorate. From there it was a short
step to the presidency.
Reuters - September 30, 2001.
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