It’s Time to Stop Bombing North Vietnam and Begin Negotiation Now!

 
“The present impasse can be broken and a halt put to the increasingly horrible slaughter and destruction of the Vietnam war only if one side or the other shows the wisdom and the courage and the compassion for humanity to take the initiative on a first step.”
 
“A cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam is an imperative necessity to create conditions for peaceful talks.”
 
U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations
March 28, 1967
 
  • We support the call by U Thant for new initiatives to bring about negotiations among all parties to the conflict, leading to a political settlement of the Vietnam war.
  • We call upon the United States, the most powerful nation in the world to take the first step and end the bombing of North Vietnam now and without conditions. We ask our government to take further initiatives leading to a standstill truce.
  • We ask North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front to respond affirmatively to any new United States initiatives and to join with the U.S. in a standstill cease-fire.
  • We ask South Vietnam to respect and join in these steps.
 
This course of action presents to the United States a moral alternative to our stated policy of bringing about negotiations by force, or to the devastation of all-out war, and a more realistic alternative than unilateral withdrawal.
 
We believe that such initiatives now can break the impasse and lead to negotiations and a political settlement providing for the removal of all foreign troops and for genuinely democratic elections in which all South Vietnamese can participate freely.
 
Martha’s Vineyard Vietnam Summer
 
[549 signatures listed.]