Ex-Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, architect of economic reforms, dies at 85

The Associated Press ,  Hanoi   |  Thu, 06/12/2008 8:03 AM  |  World

Former Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, an economic reformer who led the Communist nation away from poverty and isolation and backed the normalization of ties with the United States, died Wednesday. He was 85.

Kiet, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1997, died in a hospital in Singapore, where he was taken Saturday after suffering a stroke, government officials said.

His body was to be transported later Wednesday to Ho Chi Minh City, the city in southern Vietnam where he held a number of top Communist Party and government posts.

Born into a peasant family in southern Vinh Long province on Nov. 23, 1922, Kiet fought the French and Americans for almost four decades, joining Communist revolutionary forces at the age of 16.

As prime minister, Kiet helped craft policies that attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment, vastly expanded trade and enabled the economy to grow at an annual rate of better than 8 percent.

Impatient with Communist Party functionaries trying to protect their own turf, Kiet argued that the party could only stay in power if it loosened its tight hold over the government and business, allowing them to become more efficient.

Although his first wife and two children were said to have been killed by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, Kiet was a firm supporter of normalizing relations with the United States, finally achieved in 1995.

He supported moves to privatize much state industry, enact clearer laws and end special privileges for army and party leaders.

But he ran into stiff opposition from within the party and army, especially after circulating a memo in 1995 urging bolder reforms.

He stepped down in 1997 at age 74, saying the country badly needed a transfer of power to younger leaders.

Kiet was among a group of reformers who moved to the fore in the late 1980s.

Spurred by the near-collapse of Vietnam's economy, they began the difficult transition from a highly centralized, Soviet-style system to one allowing private enterprise and market-set prices.

After becoming prime minister in 1991, he attempted to streamline the government bureaucracy, simplify investment procedures and develop a modern body of law to replace the welter of internal edicts.

Some critics accused him of not moving quickly or decisively enough, however, and many foreign businessmen said red tape and corruption dampened initial investor enthusiasm.

While a teenager, he joined the nationalist movement against French colonial rule and became a member of the Indochina Communist Party in 1939, according to his official biography.

After the French were defeated in 1954, the party turned its efforts to reuniting the country under Communist rule. Kiet became the underground party secretary in the area of Saigon, the capital of former South Vietnam's U.S.-backed government, and a political leader of the Viet Cong guerrilla movement.

After Communist forces captured Saigon in April 1975, Kiet held a series of top posts in the city, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. His mission was to introduce socialist reforms in the capitalist bastion, but h advocated gradualism and allowed the private sector to flourish.

By 1978, Kiet and other liberal officials in the south came under intense criticism and a hard-liner - then Vice Premier Do Muoi - was brought in to shut down the south's private sector and build up state shops and industry.

Kiet was transferred to Hanoi in 1982 to become chairman of the State Planning Commission and eventually prime minister.

After retiring, he remained active in the country's affairs.

In April, he opposed a plan to dramatically expand Hanoi, Vietnam's capital, arguing that mega-cities were a model of the past that many Western countries have abandoned.

"The capital should not and must not be allowed to be a place for experiments," he wrote in state media.

The legislature, however, approved the plan last month. (*)

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