Lê Đức Thọ

Lê Đức Thọ (English: Lay-Duhk-Toh; 14 October 1911 – 13 October 1990), born Phan Đình Khải in Nam Dinh Province, was a Vietnamese revolutionary general, diplomat, and politician.

In 1930, Lê Đức Thọ helped found the Indochinese Communist Party.

French colonial authorities imprisoned him from 1930 to 1936 and again from 1939 to 1944.

The French imprisoned him in one of the "tiger cage" cells on the prison located on the island of Poulo Condore (modern Côn Sơn Island) in the South China Sea.

Poulo Condore with its "tiger cage" cells was regarded as the harshest prison in all of French Indochina.

During his time in the "tiger cage", Thọ suffered from hunger, heat, and humiliation.

Together with other Vietnamese Communist prisoners, Thọ studied literature, science, and foreign languages and acted in Molière plays.

Despite being imprisoned by the French, France was still regarded as the "land of culture", and the prisoners paid a "peculiar tribute" to French culture by putting on Molière plays.

After his release in 1945, he helped lead the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese independence movement, against the French, until the Geneva Accords were signed in 1954.

In 1948, he was in South Vietnam as Deputy Secretary, Head of the Organization Department of Cochinchina Committee Party.

He then joined the Lao Dong Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party in 1955, now the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Thọ oversaw the Communist insurgency that began in 1956 against the South Vietnamese government.

The United States actively joined the Vietnam War during the early 1960s.

In 1963 Thọ supported the purges of the Party surrounding Resolution 9.

Several rounds of Paris Peace Talks (some public, some secret) were held between 1968 and 1973.

Xuân Thuỷ was the official head of the North Vietnamese delegation, but Thọ arrived in Paris in June 1968 to take effective control.

On 26 June 1968, Thọ first met Cyrus Vance and Philip Habib of the American delegation at a "safe house" in the Paris suburb of Sceaux.

On 8 September 1968, Thọ first met W. Averell Harriman, the head of the American delegation, in a villa in the town of Vitry-sur-Seine.

At the meeting, Harriman conceded that in "serious talks" the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) might take part in the talks provided that the South Vietnamese were also allowed to join.

At another meeting with Harriman on 12 September, Thọ made the concession that South Vietnam could continue as an independent state provided the National Liberation Front could join the government, but demanded that the United States had to unconditionally cease bombing all of North Vietnam first.

After the meeting, Harriman thanked Thọ for his "straight talk", but disputed a number of Thọ's claims, saying that the Vietnam war was not the most costly war in American history.

Thọ was unhappy when Hanoi demanded that the National Liberation Front take part in the peace talks as the lead negotiating team above the North Vietnamese, which he knew would cause complications.

He flew back to Hanoi in an attempt to change the instructions, in which he was successful, but was also told to tell Harriman that an expanded four-party talks involving the Americans, the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong would begin "as early as possible" without settling a firm date.

However, the four party talks did not take place as planned as South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu decided to stall talks after receiving messages from Anna Chennault that the Republican candidate Richard Nixon would be more supportive.

On 18 January 1969, Thọ told Harriman that he regretted his departure, saying: "If you had stopped bombing after two or three months of talks, the situation would have been different now".

In February 1969, Kissinger asked the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, to set up a meeting with Thọ in Paris.

On 4 August 1969, Kissinger had a secret meeting at the house of Jean Sainteny, a former French colonial official who served in Vietnam and was sympathetic towards Vietnamese nationalism.

However, Thọ did not appear as expected and instead Thuỷ represented North Vietnam.

Thọ first met Kissinger in a secret meeting in a modest house in Paris on the night of 21 February 1970, marking the beginning of a test of wills that was to last three years.

Kissinger was later to say of Thọ: "I don't look back on our meetings with any great joy, yet he was a person of substance and discipline who defended the position he represented with dedication".

Thọ told Kissinger at their first meeting that "Vietnamization" was doomed, dismissively saying in French: "Previously, with over one million U.S and Saigon troops, you have failed. Now how can you win if you let the South Vietnamese Army fight alone and if you only give them military support?".

Kissinger took the fact that Thọ began his activism working for Vietnamese independence at the age of 16 as a proof that he was a "fanatic", portraying Thọ to Nixon as an unreasonable, uncompromising man, but one was also a well mannered, cultured and polite.

Kissinger found Thọ's air of superiority exasperating as Thọ took the viewpoint that North Vietnam was the real Vietnam, and regarded the Americans as "barbarians" who were merely trying to delay the inevitable by supporting South Vietnam.

In April 1970, Thọ broke off his meetings with Kissinger, saying that there was nothing to discuss.

He was the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, but refused the award.

Lê Đức Thọ became active in Vietnamese nationalism as a teenager and spent much of his adolescence in French prisons, an experience that hardened him.

Thọ's nickname was "the Hammer" on account of his severity.

While Xuân Thuỷ led the official negotiating team representing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at the talks in Paris, Thọ and U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger since February 1970 engaged in secret talks that eventually led to a cease-fire in the Paris Peace Accords of 23 January 1973.

On his way to Paris, Thọ stopped in Moscow to meet the Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin.

On Thọ's behalf, Kosygin sent President Lyndon B. Johnson a letter reading: "My colleagues and I believe and have grounds to believe that an end to the bombing [of North Vietnam] would lead to a breakthrough in the peace talks".