Anti-war activist stresses significance of Paris Peace Accords

New York (VNA) – The Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, signed 50 years ago, came as a result of stressful and protracted negotiations and held extreme importance, said activist Cora Weiss, one of the leaders of the anti-Vietnam-war movement then.

She told the Vietnam News Agency that the Paris Peace Accords, signed on January 27, 1973, helps give the US administration a way out from a 10-year illegitimate and unjust war in which millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of American soldiers were killed or exposed to Agent Orange.

The agreement helped put an end to this and paved the way for ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam, she noted.

During the years of negotiations, the movement rose to the strongest-ever level. From 1969, thousands took to the streets in Washington D.C. to oppose the war. The number of participants in anti-war campaigns continually increased, and protests against the US involvement in the war kept spreading to many other cities, including New York, Weiss recounted.

Her husband, Peter Weiss, who was also a famous activist in the movement, held that the signing of the Paris Peace Accords was an inevitable result for the US administration then since that war caused damage to the US in both political and economic terms.

He also emphasised the historical significance of this agreement to all the parties concerned.

Cora Weiss, born in 1934, has been well-known as a peace activist since the early 1960s and was a leader of Women Strike for Peace. She has won many prizes and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for several times.

In 1968, she established the Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam (COLIAFAM), a charity organisation helping resolve one of the conditions for ending the US involvement in Vietnam. This committee operated for about four years, until the Paris Peace Accords were inked.

After 1975, when the South was liberated and Vietnam reunified, she has continued working to assist the country./.