I do not believe-in fact I am certain that they could not maintain the level of military operations in the South without these supplies that come in from the Soviet Union through Haiphong. There has been an increase, according to the information that I received, in the last year of the amount of material coming in through the port, but the port is now at about its maximum capacity. In fact it is jammed, according to the foreigners who have seen it. They do not believe it can handle any more than is now being handled there.

SUPPLY ROUTE FROM CHINA

Now the other source of supply, of course, is the railroad and the highway route coming down from China, and in many respects this is still perhaps the most important supply route.

Now they get from China itself several items that are extremely important. The number one item is food, rice. The North Vietnamese regime normally would perhaps be able to supply itself with rice, although it is not as large a producer of rice as the south. But due to the bad weather of last year, and also due, in my opinion, to the diversion of labor, manpower and womanpower, from the rice paddies to construction and maintenance of the railroads and highways, they are falling quite short in their food production and they are becoming more and more dependent upon China to replace these supplies.

It is difficult to get a precise estimate of the shortfall in the rice crop in North Vietnam last year. We know that it was a bad rice year in all of Southeast Asia. The crops in Cambodia, in Laos, and in Burma were also off. I talked to the Russians about this, and a little bit to my amusement I found they had as much trouble getting figures and statistics from the North Vietnamese as I used to have getting them from the Russians when I was a correspondent there. But their estimate is that the North Vietnamese will be short by 600,000 to 800,000 tons of rice this year. This will have to be made up from the Chinese, and it is expected to be made up by the Chinese. This comes down by railroad principally from China directly to North Vietnam.

SMALL ARMS AND CONSUMER GOODS FROM CHINA

In addition to the rice and other food products, and I think they get some minor supplies of other kinds of food from China, they also get their small arms, their rifles, and their machineguns and in all probability some of their lighter antiaircraft weapons from the Chinese, and they get the munitions for these weapons from China.

They get a considerable portion of their consumer goods from China. They do not have much capacity themselves, and what capacity they have is badly off as a result of the war effort and to some extent as a result of the bombardment.

The consumer goods they get from China are not terribly important, each individual item in itself, and yet when you go into the stores in Hanoi, and the stores are badly stocked because they are short of almost everything you can imagine. You find that if there are yard goods there they came from China. If there is porcelain china, it came from China. If there are tin pans, they came from China.

The little items of food, crackers, and biscuits, and things of that kind came from China.

The items of clothing, if you find knit goods, that probably came from China. So they are quite dependent on that source, for consumer goods.

They are dependent upon China for another item which astonished me but which I found to be very, very important, and this is bicycles. They have a bicycle factory in Hanoi and they produce a number themselves, but the main source of their bikes is China, and without those bikes the country just could not operate. I literally believe that without bikes they would have to get out of the war. They use them for transportation, they carry most of their well, I think probably almost a hundred percent of the freight that moves down in the southern part of the country, that goes across the line into South Vietnam, moves on the bikes, and they have to have them. They get them from China.

POSSIBLE CUTOFF OF SUPPLIES FROM CHINA

Now, the fact that they are dependent on these two great allies for these vital supplies puts North Vietnam, in my opinion, in a position in which at the present time they are now interested at least in exploring whether there could be a negotiated settlement of the war. The reason for this is their acute awareness of the danger that their source of supplies from China may be cut off. There are a number of reasons why this might happen.

In the first place there is the Chinese situation itself, extremely disorderly, extremely disturbed, with a possibility at any moment that it might flare out into civil war. In that event, they are well aware that it would not be likely that China would be able to maintain the flow of supplies that come south now, and it is also possible that the flow of supplies, which has been considerably diminished but which is still important, which comes in from the Soviet Union and from Eastern Europe via Siberia and the China route, this also might be cut off.

Another possibility which is discussed in private conversations by the Eastern European diplomats, and occasionally even mentioned by the Russians themselves, is the possibility that out of this very serious conflict between China and the Soviet Union some actual military conflict might evolve. Russia and China might actually come to blows and in this event also the possibility of the cutoff of supplies through China would be very real.

There is a third possibility, and this is one which I think bothers them almost as much as the other two. This is that the Chinese, acting on their own, because of a feeling that Hanoi either was preparing to negotiate with us or was beginning to follow a more proRussian line than a pro-Chinese line, would arbitrarily close the supply route across the frontier, and in that event the North Vietnamese would be in a very serious situation indeed, because the materials which they get from China, they would no longer receive, and the Russians would be compelled then to do all of their shipping by sea, and I simply do not believe the port of Haiphong would accommodate these supplies. I do not think the Russians have the shipping available and it would be quite a critical situation.

PROPITIOUS TIME FOR NEGOTIATIONS

Now, I think it is apparent, if you consider these factors, that any reasonable or prudent government, regardless of its nature, communist or non-communist, must, looking at the future, see that the chances are that they are stronger today than they may be a few months from now or a year from now. They are stronger today while the supplies are coming in from China than they would be if they were cut off, and I think that this factor, if none other existed, would compel them to take a good close look to see whether or not it might be possible to find some honorable and decent terms on which they might bring the war to an end.

Whether they would feel at the present time sufficient urgency to be willing to agree to the kind of terms that we might seek to impose is another matter. This I do not know. It is because of the existence of this situation which is perfectly apparent in Hanoi, and I think is becoming more and more evident here and elsewhere in the world, that I have made the public suggestion and which seems to me to be one of some virtue, both from their standpoint and ours, that some kind of private exploration be undertaken by both sides to see whether or not there might be a foundation for a settlement which could be arrived at. I say "private" because it seems to me that if we go the public route, it is much more likely to wind up in a propaganda contest in which their delegate makes a statement designed to please the communist world, and our delegate makes a statement designed to please ourselves, and we do not produce anything very effective in the way of negotiation or settlement, and things go on, the casualties mount up, the war goes on in the same grim way that it did in Korea during the protracted negotiations there.

I have always thought that the best kind of settlement that you can get, and this is true in a war or any other kind of circumstance, is the one where a couple of men meet privately and see whether they can agree before they come out in public and go through the procedure of ratifying that agreement.

I have no notion of whether my suggestion has fallen on fruitful ground or fruitful soil over in Hanoi or here in Washington, but I still think that it is the sensible way to try to approach this very difficult situation. I do not think it would be easy; I am certain that their positions are dug in, I know ours are, and there is every reason for each side to be highly suspicious of the other, and yet if some end is going to be made to this very difficult and very-this war which is costing us so much in men and materiel and blood and treasure, that I think it at least is worthy of exploration.

That is what I thought would be useful to tell you gentlemen. I would be delighted to try to answer any questions if you have any. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Salisbury. I have a few questions.

NON-COMMUNIST REPORTERS IN HANOI

You went there, of course, as a representative of the New York Times simply to report conditions as you saw them. Is that correct? Mr. SALISBURY. That is absolutely correct.

The CHAIRMAN. How Hanoi that you know of? Mr. SALISBURY. At the

reporter there.

many non-communist reporteres were in Were you the only one?

time I arrived there was one non-communist

The CHAIRMAN. Where was he from?

Mr. SALISBURY. There was the reporter from Agence France Presse, the French news agency. He is stationed there permanently; AFP has had a man there perhaps for nearly a year. But I am not absolutely certain.

Before I left, two other Americans arrived on the scene. Mr. Baggs of the Miami News, and Harry Ashmore, an ex-newspaperman from Little Rock.

The CHAIRMAN. Were they there as reporters or private citizens? Mr. SALISBURY. They came there as reporters not basically, although Mr. Baggs operated as a reporter.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you see them and talk to them?

Mr. SALISBURY. No. They came the night I was leaving, and I must say I was busy writing at my typewriter and I was leaving at 4 a.m. that morning, and I did not get a chance to talk to them.

REASON FOR NO MEETING WITH HO CHI MINH

The CHAIRMAN. Did you talk to Ho Chi Minh?

Mr. SALISBURY. No, I did not have an interview with Ho Chi Minh, although I requested one. My only important interview with a member of the Government was with the Prime Minister, Mr. Pham Van Dong.

The CHAIRMAN. Why did you not see Ho Chi Minh? I understand Baggs and Ashmore did.

Mr. SALISBURY. That is quite correct. I requested, when I arrived, interviews with three individuals. Ho was No. 1. General Giap was No. 2, and Pham Van Dong was No. 3. These were the three men whom I thought were very important and whom I should talk to. It was indicated to me by the Foreign Office that in all probability I would be allowed to see only one of these individuals. They suggested that I put in questions to each one of them with a letter indicating what I wanted talk to them about. I put in the three letters, and I must say I put in about the same questions phrased somewhat differently since I realized I was only going to get one of the three men. In the end they said my interview would be with the Prime Minister. Now, I have a theory as to why I talked to the Prime Minister and not Ho Chi Minh. I will elucidate that. Ho, in the week or the two weeks that I was there, and the week following, gave four interviews or received four groups of foreign visitors. He received Mr. Baggs and Mr. Ashmore. He received a German group who were in there excuse me, I forgot to mention there was a German newspaperman there too, a non-communist, and they were received. He received these four American women who went over there on a peace mission, and he received someone else whom I forget, and on each occasion it was a rather ceremonial meeting.

These people came in and they had tea, and Ho spoke with them rather briefly and informally, and in a rather flowery manner, and you may have read in the papers some of the statements that he made

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such as if we stop bombing, then we can have a cup of tea together or something of that kind.

I would not say that these were really working meetings. They were more ceremonial meetings.

I think that they realized that I had a more serious purpose, that I really wanted to find out more about their position, at least I hoped that that was their belief, because that was true, and so Pham Van Dong received me and we had a meeting that lasted four and a half hours in which he expounded their position very, very extensively, and I might say I took it upon myself to expound some thoughts as well.

NONSOURCING OF CASUALTY FIGURES

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Salisbury, would you clarify this question about why you did not reveal the source of your statistics in early reports? This has been commented on in the press here, and for our information I would like to have your views about that.

Mr. SALISBURY. I would be delighted to comment on that. The question of nonsourcing of the casualty figures-this is what it related to in, I think it was, my first story from Hanoi-arose a couple of days after the story came in. This was an error on my part, a simple journalistic error. I should have put the source in there as I was taught in my journalism school to do.

The story was put together very hastily on Christmas Eve, and inadvertently I did not say that the figures that I used for the casualties in Hanoi or in the streets came from the municipal officials of Hanoi. I think it was quite apparent to everyone who read the story that they must have come from the officials, that I did not invent them myself.

I had a feeling, and maybe I am unfair in this, that the question of the sourcing of those figures was introduced really to sort of start a false hare on this matter because the statistics themselves were really not very impressive.

If you go back and look at them, I think there were five people killed in one street and four in another, and the number of houses knocked down again were not very impressive so I do not think there can be any real question of these figures being inflated for propaganda purposes or anything of the kind.

In fact, I noticed that later on, Mr. Sylvester of the Defense Department who raised the question in the first place, and it was a proper question to raise, used my figures, the same figures that I quoted. He used these figures to show that our bombing had been extremely precise because we had caused only a very small number of casualties, and indeed the figures could be used that way because the casualties were not very great.

That, I think, really summarizes the situation so far as the question of sourcing of the figures is concerned.

Someone, again I believe it was the Defense Department, made a remarkable discovery that I used exactly the same figures in connection with Namdinh as the North Vietnamese had put out earlier in a propoganda pamphlet about the casualties in Namdinh, and I think that Mr. Clifton Daniel, our managing editor, made a very appropriate comment on that. He said, "Of course the figures are the same, they come from the same source," which is quite right. Had there been a difference in these figures, I think it might have been quite