LIKE AN OLD DEBT repaid years too late, the President's announcement of the Vietnam peace agreement is welcome news tainted by tardiness. The criminal December bombing of civilians in the North marked the final outrage in a long train of abuse that should have been ended at least four years and a million lives ago. Now, welcome as the agreement is, it comes too late for any American to claim honor in our prosecution of the war or in our disengagement.

As it stands, the agreement is fuzzy in outline and extremely delicate: whether it will survive depends on the determination of the signers to smooth over the inevitable conflicts that will arise in its implementation. It is up to the President to avoid the precedent of the 1954. Geneva agreements--which were speedily torpedoed by the refusal of the United States to permit Vietnam to conduct its elections.

Beyond faithful adherence to the spirit as well as to the letter of the peace plan, and a determination to preserve it by whatever concessions necessary on the part of the United States, there are several issues our government must address in order to make our future participation in the affairs of Vietnam more regenerative than destructive. Just as arms shipments into Indochina from all foreign sources should be stopped, all American military aid to Thieu should be cut off, and any assistance that will bolster his influence over the non-governmental council of national reconciliation should be held back. That council, composed of neutralists, members of the N.L.F., and elements of the current South Vietnamese government, should be allowed to determine the future of Vietnam without political or economic interference from America. American aid to both halves of the war-torn country should be administered by the International Control Commission, and aid to the South should not have to pass through the notoriously sticky fingers of Nguyen Van Thieu.

Both the United States and Hanoi have stated that the South Vietnamese people have a right to self-determination. When the fighting stops, that right will be a mockery unless Thieu releases the neutralist and communist political prisoners who have been rounded up during the war. One of the first actions our government must require of Thieu under what appears to be a plan of continued American patronage is that political prisoners be released and allowed to take part in the council of reconciliation.

Americans must not be lulled into self-congratulation by the President's assertions that American involvement in Vietnam has been "one of the most selfless enterprises in the history of nations:" our part in the ravagement of Indochina and the sacrifice of Asian and American lives can never be explained away by our willing support of a string of corrupt regimes. Now that the fighting is about to stop, we must urge Congress to turn off the military pipeline to Thieu, to insist on the release of political prisoners, and to prevent further American intervention in the political future of Vietnam.