Statement to the Press at the Close of the Honolulu Conference

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen:

I will be leaving shortly for home, and before I left I wanted to make a very brief statement and present the distinguished President who is visiting us, who has already planned with you a press conference.

I don't want to either prolong it or, in courtesy of course, I do not want to interfere with it.

I thought I would point up for the benefit of our press, one or two items of a very general interest.

First of all, as all of you have been informed, the President had been invited to come to the United States, and for reasons that prevail at this moment, found it more desirable for us to have a meeting here, and asked me to come here.

We have spent 10 hours together, about twice the time that Presidents normally exchange views in state visits.

This 10 hours was spent following a rather full report by Secretary Clifford and General Wheeler, strictly on the military situation as they observed it in some 4 or 5 days in South Vietnam--the condition of our troops, their equipment, their facilities, their morale, the condition of the allied troops, especially ARVN troops, the progress that has been made and so forth.

I think you have been given a rundown on all of that, so I won't delay it.

The political aspects of our visit started with a private exchange between the President and me about the negotiations in Paris, the events that led to it--particularly my announcements--and somewhat on the ground rules we established in my speech of March 31, which are very much controlling, then and today.

This is the first chance we have had to visit, President Thieu and myself, since that speech. We spent some time going over the events that led to it, what was said in the speech, and the subsequent events that have followed, including the briefing that Mr. Vance gave me in some detail when he spent the night at the White House a few days ago.

That was followed by a briefing by Secretary Rusk and his evaluation of what was going on in Paris.

Now, there is no information that I could give the President, or Secretary Rusk could give him, that he did not already have, so far as what had actually transpired in Paris, because we not only keep his people fully informed in Paris, but we keep Ambassador Bunker informed just as the Secretary of State is informed, or the President. Ambassador Bunker in turn makes available that information to President Thieu.

We discussed the rapidly absorbing infiltrators from the North and how the North Vietnamese are attempting to fill up their units and reequip those units for what we would assume is another major series of attacks.

We explored all the information we could find to try to ascertain if the enemy had engaged in any effort to match our deescalation, as announced in my March 31 speech. We could not find any solid evidence that the enemy had taken such action or intended to take such action in response to my call.

The President went into some detail in reviewing with me the Armed Forces of South Vietnam and the substantial increase that had been effected to where it now has reached 765,000. I know you will be interested in that because of the great interest the press has had in the past about the contribution made by the South Vietnamese.

That is roughly about 50,000 more men than the original goal for that time. That is very noteworthy and we were very happy to have the President go into this with us.

President Thieu predicted that the total will run over 800,000 by the end of 1968, a few months down the road.

We agreed that having carried out our accelerated schedules of reequipping the ARVN that we would have to expedite and concentrate in the months ahead on upgrading the equipment for the paramilitary forces down to the very hamlet level.

The Secretary and General Wheeler are now working on plans to that end.

President Thieu, with pride, told me of the great progress of the new government, including not only the efforts in the field of mobilization, but increased taxes.

He discussed the unified defense in Saigon, the rapid introduction of new rice seeds, and reviewed with me a good many other developments since we last met.

We have seen and heard a good many rumors and we know there are rumor mills. I would just like to make one reference to them. Most of the rumors--all that I have heard--were not in our discussions at all.

The facts of the discussions that took place between the two principals are reflected in the communiqué which we worked on until almost midnight last night to make available to you.

The reason for giving it to you this early is in the hope that--Mr. Christian hoped that-you would have a chance to review it, digest it, and ask any questions you want to about it and still meet your deadlines, instead of waiting until this afternoon to get it to you for your Sunday papers.

Summarized, I would say this: We are resolutely determined to continue to pursue every avenue that might lead to peace, and the two Presidents are in full agreement and are cooperating fully with our foreign ministers and our negotiators to that end.

At the same time, we are equally determined to defend South Vietnam as these explorations go forward.

Of course, we hope always for the best, but we will be prepared for the worst.

I now take great pleasure in saying to you that we think it was a good, working, understanding conference. There were no great differences that appeared. There were no points of division.

We both understand each other reasonably well. The conference was not very exciting in that there is nothing for you to report in the way of fighting among us or division among the allies.

The big rumors about meeting here to discuss stopping the bombing or to pull out or to do these things are just pure, absolute tommyrot and fiction. They are not the product of either President, and they never appeared in any of our discussions of any kind.

Now, I repeat again, everything that transpired, as nearly as we can record it, is in that communiqué. And it is available to you.

It is a great pleasure now to present President Thieu.

If there are any questions that you have on your way back that involve the United States, I will be available to you or Mr. Christian will be glad to pursue them in depth with you.

Thank you very much.