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* j i ! . 42 ‘ PEACE IN VIETNAM vision for elections, it had stated: “In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to seck to achieve unity through elections supervised by the United Nations to insure that they are conducted fairly.” In its decfaration the United States likewise spoke only of a single Vietnam, not of a South and a North Vietnam. It was not until January 1955 that France transferred all the essential attributes of authority to the Saigon regime headed by Bao Dai. But even before this the United States had begun to support his administration and especially Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem, who had been appointed by Bao Dai two weeks befére the Geneva Conference concluded, Diem came from a Roman Catholic Mandarin family which served the vestigial and effectively French-controlled imperial Annamese court at Hué in central Vietnam. After working in the imperial administration for four years, Diem resigned in 1933 because of a dispute with Emperor Bao Dai. In 1949, following a long period of political retirement and study, Diem was offered the premiership by Ho Chi Minh, He turned it down, in part because he held the Vietminh responsible for the murder of his brother, After an unsuccessful attempt to develop a rival political party, he left Vietnam in August 1950 and spent four years abroad, mostly in the United States. At least as early as November 1954, the United States had decided to support Diem in setting ‘up an anti-Communist state in South Vietnam, making clear that Amer- ican aid would be given to him alonc. While the Saigon regime of Ngo Dinh Diem soon disencum- bered itself of Bao Dai and freed itself of French control, it failed to satisfy nationalist aspirations. Ho Chi Minh, who for the pre- vious decade had been the acknowledged head of the Vietnamese nationalist movement, simply could not be displaced by Ngo Dinh Diem, a man supported from the outside, tittle known, and absent from the country during the critical years of the war against the French, Partition did not mean that the area south of the 17th parallel emerged free of Communist influence or of predispositions toward the regime of Ho Chi Minh. The population there could + "See Appendix I-C.