Secret Peace Negotiations Begin

National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger meets secretly with North Vietnamese official Xuan Thuy in Paris to begin back channel peace negotiations. Later meetings will be between Kissinger and Hanoi senior leader Le Duc Tho.

Like the official negotiations that began in 1968, these secret talks are unproductive. North Vietnam refuses any ceasefire without the dissolution of the government in Saigon, the demobilization of the South Vietnamese military, and the full withdrawal of the United States—terms that the United States will not accept.¹