True, in July 1962 he accepted a Burmese proposal to have Averell Harriman meet with his North Vietnamese counterparts at Geneva to discuss not only the Laos talks but also the situation in South Vietnam, which would seem to suggest that he might be willing to make a genuine attempt to reach an accommodation on the war. But there is no indication that JFK saw the meeting as significant. Harriman took an utterly intransigent line with DRV foreign minister Ung Van Khiem, demanding from Hanoi what would have amounted to a complete capitulation
