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tte Wrew, tas + 4 7 49 PEACE IN VIETNAM pendence, this regime had proved incapable of winning popular support. Most of its administrators were Frenchmen or Vietnamesc who were regarded by the population as agents of the French. At the time of Geneva there were, then, two competing gov- ernmments. One was the Victminh government of Ho Chi Minh, con- trolling about three-quarters of the country, with approximately as much of its territory south as north of the 17th paraliel. The other government was the French military administration with its Vietnamese veneer—the essentially puppet government of Bao Dai, operating in French-held enclaves both north and south of the 17th parallel, and largely confined to urban areas such as Hanoi, Saigon, and their immediate surroundings. The representatives of nine governments participated in the Geneva Conference of 1954: Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, France, Laos, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the Vietminh}, the State of Vietnam (the French-supported Bao Dai regime), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United King- dom, and the United States of America. Tt is important to note that there were two agreements: The Geneva Accords (Final Declaration) and the Geneva Armistice Agreement (Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities}.1 The armistice agreement was the essential foundation upon which the Accords rested. It pro- vided for a military truce between two parties only: Ho Chi Minh’s Victminh government and the French military command. The regime of Bao Dai, of which the present Saigon government is successor, was merely the powerless agent of the French mili- tary administration. It was the French who disposed of all real authority in those areas not controlled by the Vietminh, This . military truce between the French and the Victminh was the basic document, providing for temporary partition of Vietnam and for the withdrawal of French troops from north, and of Viet- minh forces from south, of the 17th parallel. This partition, however, was clearly described in terms of a military regroupment of forces. It involved no political boundary and certainly provided no basis for the establishment of a separate state in the South. Article 6 of the Final Declaration at Geneva contd Cou | at have hh mara site 6b . rot have been more explicit: “The Conference recagnizes io * See Appendix I-A.