North Vietnamese Peace Talks? 
from CBS Evening News, April 4, 1968.
President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) had announced a week earlier that he would not seek re-election in 1968. Conditions had changed significantly since his landslide against Barry Goldwater ("Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice") in 1964 -- the Vietnam War was claiming about 300-400 American soldiers a week with no end in sight, and Eugene McCarthy (Senator from Minnesota) had nearly beaten Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Johnson's news had caused the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi to suggest starting peace talks, which made the So. Vietnamese government nervous, since they were worried that the United States might suddenly accept terms that were unfavorable to them to end the war. The South Vietnamese government was not well supported by its own people (being the remnants of the Catholic-dominated Colonial regime left over from the French) whereas the North Vietnamese government was interested in nationalism for Vietnam without being anyone's puppet. However, since they were a Communist government, the United States felt it necessary to prop up the So. Vietnamese to save the country from becoming Communist, and a possible ally of China (even though the Vietnamese historically hated the Chinese for hundreds of years).
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