Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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The effect of these negotiations on the situation in Vietnam will be threefold:
First, the very fact that the Fourteen Powers are meeting under essentially the same ground rules as the 1954 Geneva Accords, including the concept of an ICC mechanism in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, could have a politically inhibiting effect on any significant measures which the U.S. might undertake to prevent a Communist take-over in South Vietnam.
Second, as has been their practice in the past, the Communists can be expected to use the cover of an international negotiation to expand their subversive activities. In this case, close coordination of their efforts in Southern Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam can be expected. The 250 mile border between South Vietnam and Laos, while never effectively sealed in the past, will now be deprived of even the semblance of protection which the friendly, pro-western. Laos offers.
Third, the three principal passes through the Annamite Mountains - the Nape Pass, Mugia Gap, and the pass that controls the road from Quang Tri to Savanakhet - lie in Southern Laos. These passes control three key military avenues of advance from North Vietnam through Laos into the opening Mekong valley leading to Thailand and South Vietnam. A Lao political settlement that would afford the Communists an opportunity to maintain any sort of control, covertly or otherwise, of these mountain passes would make them gate keepers to the primary inland invasion
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