The failure of the first Dalat Conference did not deter the French high commissioner for Indochina, Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, from organizing a second conference in order to move forward on his Indochinese Federation and validate the existence of a separate Cochinchinese state within it. The second conference in Dalat began on 1 August 1946 and this time the high commissioner did not receive any representatives of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), but instead invited participants representing the other Indochinese states, including Laos, Cambodia and the Provisional Government of the Republic of Cochinchina, which he had officially announced on 1 June 1946. The timing of the second conference was intentionally designed to coincide with the negotiations occurring at Fontainebleau between the DRV and the French government over the future status of Cochinchina/Nam Bo. Delegates at the second conference began studying the federal institutions Thierry d’Argenlieu was determined to put in place (police, currency, customs, etc.). The leader of the DRV’s delegation to the Fontainebleau Conference, which had begun on 6 July, Pham Van Dong, strongly denounced the holding of the second Dalat conference and on 1 August broke off the negotiations at Fontainebleau in protest, resuming them on 24 August.