Reischauer: Army Can't Defeat NLF

It would be disastrous for President-elect Nixon to be persuaded by the top brass of the Pentagon that they could win the Vietnam war militarily in a few more months, Professor Edwin O. Reischauer said yesterday.

Reischauer, former American ambassador to Japan, spoke at a press conference at the Sheraton-Plaza Hotel as one of four new "diplomatic sponsors" of the Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace, a group consisting of 2300 executives.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics and former ambassador to India, was announced as another of the sponsors, but could not appear at the conference due to illness.

"My great fear is that the Nixon administration may be a little slow in starting the de-Americanizing of the war," Reischauer said.

Reischauer warned against pulling out of Southeast Asia "in a clumsy, helter-skelter way." Such a withdrawal, he said, would further damage American prestige and cause friendly nations to lose confidence in the U.S.

The steps necessary before peace can be achieved, Reischauer said, are:

* A cease fire.

* Economic give-and-take from the various Vietnam zones.

* An advisory role for the United States.

The Paris peace talks may drag on for a long time and possibly never achieve their objective, Reischauer said.

Besides Reischauer and Galbraith, the diplomat-sponsors of the executive group include Benjamin V. Cohen, former State Department counsellor and senior advisor to the U.S. delegation at the United Nations, and Roger Hilsman, former assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern affairs.