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OCR Page 1 of 15This Copy For
PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON'S NEWS CONFERENCE #23
Held in the Oval Office
At the White House
Washington, D. C.
March 24, 1972
At 3:09 P.M. EST (Friday)
Official White House Transcript
THE PRESIDENT: Miss Lewine, we will take your question
first.
QUESTION: In view of the suspension of the Paris peace
talks, can you tell us if the hopes are dimming for a negotiated
peace settlement and what you assess the situation as?
THE PRESIDENT: What we are really trying to do there,
Miss Lewine, and this is being done under my direction, is to
break the filibuster. There has been about a 3-1/2 year fili-
buster on the peace talks on the part of the North Vietnamese.
They have refused to negotiate seriously and they have used the
talks for the purpose of propaganda while we have been trying
to seek peace. Whenever the enemy is ready to negotiate
seriously, we are ready to negotiate, and I would emphasize we
are ready to negotiate in public channels or in private channels.
As far as the hopes for a negotiated peace are concerned,
I would say that the way the talks were going, there was no
hope whatever. I am not saying that this move is going to
bring a negotiation. I do say, however, that it was necessary
to do something to get the talks off dead center and to see
whether the enemy continued to want to use the talks only for
propaganda or whether they wanted to negotiate.
When they are ready, we are ready; but we are not going
to continue to allow them to use this forum for the purpose of
bullyragging the United States in a propaganda forum rather
than in seriously negotiating peace, as we tried to do as
exemplified by not only our private contacts in the 12 meetings
that I discussed on January 25th, but also in my speech of
January 25th in which I made a very forthcoming offer.