VietNamNet Bridge – The Geneva Agreement, which will reach its 60th anniversary on July 20, marks an important milestone in the struggle for national liberation of the Vietnamese people and is considered a great victory of Vietnamese diplomatic sector.

The Geneva peace conference (Photo: VNA)

The agreement, signed in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1954 during the Geneva peace conference, is the first international document acknowledging the independence, sovereignty, unification and territorial integrity of Vietnam as well as Laos and Cambodia.

Together with the 1946 French-Vietnamese preliminary agreement and the 1973 Paris Agreement, the Geneva Agreement on ceasefire in Vietnam is the most important diplomatic document of Vietnam during the two resistance wars against France and the US.

It was a comprehensive solution in both political and military terms, ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam, which went beyond the initial intention of world big players to limit the document to the framework of a pure ceasefire agreement.

Politically and legally, the countries participating in the conference recognised and committed to respecting fundamental national rights of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which are national sovereignty, independence, unification and territorial integrity.

The agreement internationally marked the failure of the invasion war launched by a strong imperialist, as well as the beginning of the collapse of the entire colonial system on the global scale, contributing to encouraging the national liberation struggle of colony peoples.

At the same time, the agreement was a crucial diplomatic success in the first multilateral talks that Vietnam had taken part in, creating a firm legal foundation for later negotiations, especially that with the US during the Paris conference on Vietnam.

The Geneva conference on restoring peace in Vietnam and Indochina was held following the decision of the February 1954 meeting in Berlin of the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, the US, the UK and France. In the context of the different goals and interests pursued by these big players as well as their great influence, Vietnam still upheld the external policy of independence and self-reliance with the highest goal of achieving acknowledgement of Vietnam’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

On May 10, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, who led the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) to the conference, presented the eight-point stance of the DRV, stating that the withdrawal of foreign troops out of three Indochinese countries was the most important basis for the ending of war and the restoration of peace in Indochina.

According to Tran Viet Phuong, former secretary of Deputy PM Dong, the Dien Bien Phu victory as well as a series of military successes in battlefields across Vietnam was of significant importance, giving an advantage to the DRV delegation at the conference.

The victory helped garner the support of French friends and peace-loving people around the world for the struggle for national liberation of the Vietnamese people, he said.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam successfully brought into full play the power of the national unity bloc and combined the military and diplomatic strength, leading to the signing of the Geneva Agreement.

VNA/VNN