South Vietnam while the United States and other non-communist states recognised the Bảo Đại government. In July 1954, France and the Viet Minh (later the Viet Cong) agreed at the Geneva Conference that the State of Vietnam would rule the territory south of the 17th parallel, pending unification on the basis of supervised elections in 1956. At the time of the conference, it was expected that the South would continue to be a French dependency. However, South Vietnamese Premier Ngô Đình Diệm, who preferred American sponsorship to French, rejected the agreement. When Vietnam was divided, 800,000 to 1 million North Vietnamese, mainly
Geneva Agreement (1966) Guyana should have signed it. On the 52nd anniversary of the international treaty being signed in Switzerland, Venezuelan Government has reaffirmed it's commitment to the Geneva Agreement. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza declared that the Bolivarian nation was ready to comply to the agreement. President Nicolas Maduro has called on the Venezuelan people to defend their "legitimate and non-renounceable" territorial rights over the Essequibo region. Defense Minister Vladamir Padrino Lopez stresses that Venezuelans should continue to claim their territory and stated on his social media "The Sun of Venezuela is born in the Essequibo." The agreement was criticized in Guyana