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,
Geneva Agreement (1966) contention that the "Arbitral Award of 1899 about the frontier between British Guyana and Venezuela is null and void", followed by Venezuela declaring ownership of a large portion of Guyana's territory. The Geneva Agreement was published in the Nº 28.008 Official Gazette of Venezuela of 15 April 1996 and subsequently registered by this same country on 5 May 1966 in the General Office of the Organization of the United Nations under registration number Nº I-8192. Three months later after signing the agreement, on 26 May 1966, the British Guyana colony receives the independence, being called from then on "Republic of