Lost cable sheds light on UK efforts on Vietnam

By Peter Graff

LONDON (Reuters) - A copy of a top-secret diplomatic cable found on the counter of a London bank 40 years ago has shed light on the collapse of British efforts to negotiate an early end to the Vietnam War.

The four-page cable, from Prime Minister Harold Wilson to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, describes Wilson's private meetings with the Soviet foreign minister in February 1967, when London and Moscow were trying to act as a conduit for U.S. proposals to halt the bombing of North Vietnam.

A yellowing copy of the cable was in a file declassified by Britain's National Archive on Thursday.

Murray MacLehose, principal private secretary to Foreign Secretary George Brown, left the copy of the cable at the bank a week after a visit by Soviet Foreign Minister Yuri Kosygin.

Another British diplomat found it and turned it in.

One official described the incident as "obviously a very grave security breach". But the file shows Wilson and Brown stepped in to prevent an outside investigation.

"(Brown) wished me to inform the Prime Minister that Mr. MacLehose was 'a hell of a good fellow'. He had been working extremely long hours with little sleep and had had the misfortune to leave this paper in the Bank of Scotland," one official records.

Later in the year, MacLehose was made Britain's ambassador to Vietnam. He would go on to become governor of Britain's colony of Hong Kong.