~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnam focuses on economy in key meeting

HANOI - Vietnam's Communist Party leaders began a vital meeting on Thursday, with sticky issues such as economic integration and a stalled trade deal with the United States likely to dominate the agenda.
Police clamped tight security around the party headquarters in central Hanoi, where the 170-member Central Committee is scheduled to meet until November 12. The party has said little about the plenum, except that it will focus on the economy.

But analysts said the plenum would be one of the most critical in years, and that it might also be one of the last opportunities Hanoi would get to restore confidence in foreign investors dismayed by red tape and graft. Held against a backdrop of flooding in central Vietnam that has killed at least 100 people, the meeting is likely to debate issues that go to the heart of one-party rule in the country.

Many cadres realise integration with the world will erode party control over the economy, making the party and its discredited ideology less relevant to millions of Vietnamese.
But the party also understands that legitimacy increasingly rests with economic growth faster than the 4.7-5.0 percent it has forecast for this year, something which requires investment, new technology and more competitive companies.

``This is by far the most important plenum for some time. Trading with the world is going to be right up there,'' said one senior party official, adding that the leadership might reach a decision about economic integration at the gathering. Plenums are normally held behind closed doors every six months to discuss broad policy issues. However, it can take days or weeks for the party to announce the results.
Financial and party sources say it was Hanoi's hesitation in signing a landmark trade deal with the United States that triggered debate over economic integration. Ratification of the trade pact would open Vietnam's economy and liberalise its investment rules, requirements that forced the communist elite to ask themselves if they were ready to embrace economic integration.

TOP DISSIDENT URGES ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

Leading dissident Nguyen Dan Que, a former Noble Peace Prize nominee who has spent 20 of the last 23 years in prison, said in a statement obtained by Reuters that the welfare of the country's 79 million people was at stake.

``The politburo...must place the country's interests above (their own) egoistic privileges...especially in signing the trade agreement with the U.S. and paving the way for the integration of Vietnam into the world economy,'' Que said. The 19-member politburo, which wields ultimate authority in Vietnam, sits on the central committee.

Zachary Abuza, a Vietnam expert at Simmons College in the United States, said the country risked falling further behind its Asian neighbours if leaders failed to break the deadlock.
``I imagine much of the debate is going to focus on the American trade deal, not so much because of the trade itself, but as an indicator of where the country is going to head economically,'' Abuza told Reuters. Many analysts have said if the trade pact was not signed soon its chance of approval by the U.S. Congress next year might be jeopardised because of the U.S. presidential poll.

However, Congressional Republicans have indicated they were ready to press for approval early next year if Hanoi signed. Aides to top Republicans also said it was doubtful the pact would get bogged down in election-year politics.

Reuters - November 4, 1999.