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his fellow co-Chairman
that they should jointly do what they
could to help promote a settlement, but so far the Russians
had always failed to respond.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary said that he
had just discussed the situation with Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers had said that the Americans saw their way
through the next stages of the withdrawal of U.S. troops,
but he had thought that there would come a time when a
conference could be useful to settle the final withdrawal
of all foreign forces.
Mr. Sato commented the first essential was to stop
the fighting. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary
feared that this would not happen until the North
Vietnamese reached a position in which they thought it was
no longer in their interest to go on with the war. Prince
Souvanna Phouma had told him that the North Vietnamese
had been hit so hard that it was no longer possible for
them to reinforce the Pathet Lao in Laos and mount an
attack against Cambodia. But it was too soon to be sure
of this assessment. Mr. Sato thought it would be some
time before the Indo China problem was settled.
Mr. Sato referred to the different approaches of
the Japanese and British Governments towards the problem
of China. Japan still recognised the Nationalists in
Taiwan. They were, nonetheless, ready to talk at
government level with Peking but so far Peking had failed to
respond.
The Prime Minister said that he understood Japan's
problem.
We of course had recognised the Peking
Government from an early stage. However, on the question
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