1954 Geneva Conference moving South". At the same time, 52,000 people from the South went North, mostly Viet Minh members and their families. The US replaced the French as a political backup for Ngo Dinh Diem, the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam, who asserted his power in the South. The Geneva conference had not provided any specific mechanisms for the national elections planned for 1956, and Diem refused to hold them by citing that the South had not signed and were not bound to the Geneva Accords and that it was impossible to hold free elections in the communist North. Instead,
1954 Geneva Conference negotiations to that end should resume at an appropriate time. The Belgian and British delegations said that while they were not going to accept "the Soviet and Chinese proposals, that did not mean a rejection of the ideas they contained". In the end, however, the conference participants did not agree on any declaration. While the delegates began to assemble in Geneva from late April, the discussions on Indochina did not begin until May 8, 1954. The Viet Minh had achieved their decisive victory over the French Union forces at Dien Bien Phu the previous day. The Western allies did not