Hanoi, Jan 27: Vietnam celebrated today the 30th anniversary of the Paris peace accord, which brought an end to direct US military intervention in the country after more than a decade of fighting. The agreement was signed in the French capital on January 27, 1973, by the United States, north Vietnam, south Vietnam and the Viet Cong guerrilla movement fighting the Saigon regime and its American backers.
"The Paris conference and Paris accord set a glorious landmark in Vietnamese history," foreign minister Nguyen Dy Nien wrote in today's edition of the ruling Communist Party's Nhan Dan newspaper.
It forced "the Americans to stop the war and their intervention in Vietnam, putting an end to their destructive war in the north and forcing them to withdraw their invading army from southern Vietnam," he added.
The agreement was the result of nearly five arduous years of talks, most of them held in top secret, between US president Richard Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger and his opposite number Le Duc Tho.
It was preceded by the devastating Christmas 1972 bombing campaign of the densely populated Haiphong-Hanoi corridor, which killed more than 1,500 civilians and sparked a wave of condemnation across the globe.
The pact stipulated an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional withdrawal of all US troops in Vietnam and a cessation to north Vietnam's infiltration of men and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia. Bureau Report