U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War After the implementation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, neither the United States nor its allies ever formally charged North Vietnam with the war crimes revealed to have been committed there. Extradition of North Vietnamese officials who had violated the Geneva Convention, which they had always insisted officially did not bind them because their nation had never signed it, was not a condition of the U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam and ultimate abandonment of the South Vietnamese government. In the 2000s, the Vietnamese government has held the position that claims that prisoners were tortured during the war are fabricated, but
1965 in the Vietnam War order and evaded pursuit by the ARVN. President Johnson halted the bombing of North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder in an attempt to induce the North Vietnamese to negotiate a peace agreement. North Vietnam instead said the bombing halt was only "an effort to camouflage American intensification of the war." North Vietnam's leader Ho Chi Minh met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong in China. Ho said that North Vietnam would "take the main burden of the war by themselves" but requested additional Chinese economic and military support. Mao agreed and they set the ground rules for Chinese assistance: North Vietnamese