Le Duc Tho, the silver-haired Vietnamese poet-revolutionary who outwitted Henry Kissinger at the Paris peace talks, rejected the Nobel Peace Prize because he was asked to share it with Kissinger, whom he called 'a liar, a horsetrader.'
Tho was the feared strategist behind both the bloody 1968 Tet Offensive in South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Campaign that led to the capture of Saigon by communist forces on April 30, 1975.
Until he stepped down from the ruling Politburo Wednesday, his vast responsibilities included overseeing Vietnam's military occupation of Cambodia and attempting to pull his country's devastated economy onto its feet.
Tho said in a March 1985 interview with United Press International that age had forced him to cut back his work schedule.
'Now, for me, seven hours of work a day is already a lot. At night, I rest,' he said.
Born Oct. 10, 1911, as Phan Dinh Khai, he adopted the nom de guerre Le Duc Tho, following the example of his mentor, the late Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, whose name also was a wartime alias.
Tho was dispatched to the Paris peace talks in May 1968, fresh from successfully directing the Tet Offensive, which spectacularly demonstrated the futility of the U.S. troop buildup in Vietnam.
When first chosen to represent North Vietnam in the talks, he objected, calling Americans 'bandits.'
But the poet-revolutionary -- who regarded his emotional poems as 'the cornerstones of my life' -- lent a certain dignity to the negotiations, which were delayed several months while North Vietnam carped about the shape of the negotiating table.
The secret Paris peace talks began in August 1969 with Tho pulling strings behind the scenes.
Six months later, he dropped his cover as 'special adviser' to the North Vietnamese delegation and sat down across the table from Kissinger as its head negotiator. The frustrating, virtually fruitless bargaining began in earnest.
Kissinger was no match for the obstinate old revolutionary, who was in no hurry to come to terms unless they were his own.
Tho noted the negotiations took place 'in unique circumstances.'
'It was during the war. There were scenes of massacre, images of the B-52 bombing of Hanoi with many women and children killed,' he recalled.
'That was the atmosphere in which the negotiations took place. It was very tense,' Tho said.
'I once told him (Kissinger) 'You are a liar, a horsetrader, you are perfidious.'
'He had agreed with me on the whole text of the agreement, but the next day he changed ... because of this, I called him a liar.'
On Jan. 23, 1973, Tho and Kissinger initialed the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam -- an accord as cumbersome as its name.
On Oct. 16, 1973, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Kissinger and Tho. It was the most controversial decision in the history of the prize and two Nobel committee members resigned in protest.
'The Paris Agreement brought a wave of joy and hope to the entire world,' the Nobel committee announced, unaware that the agreement already had disintegrated.
Kissinger promptly accepted the honor. Tho waited a week, then declined.
'Unfortunately, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put the aggressor and the victim of aggression on the same par. ... That was a blunder,' Tho said, adding that he wrote the Nobel committee a letter saying that.
'The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the greatest prizes in the world,' Tho said. 'But the United States conducted a war of aggression against Vietnam. It is we, the Vietnamese people, who made peace by defeating the American war of aggression against us, by regaining our independence and freedom.'
