Pham Van Dong dies

Hanoi, May 2 (AFP): Former Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, one of the last leaders of the country's Independence struggle, has died aged 95 here, the Communist Party announced today.

An official party communique will be released this evening, a party spokesman said. Dong, born in 1906, died on Saturday on the eve of celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon - now Ho Chi Minh city - at the end of the Vietnam war.

(In this April 16,1998 Reuters file photo Pham Van Dong is seen at the funeral of former foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach. Despite his failing health and blindness, he continued to exercise huge influence over the Vietnamese regime.)

He headed the Vietnamese delegation at the 1954 Geneva conference which resulted in France's withdrawal from its former colonial possession and the partition of the country.

The same year he was named Prime Minister of North Vietnam, a post he held through the reunification of the country following the fall of the pro-America regime in the South, until 1987.

The ``favourite nephew'' of ``Uncle Ho'' Chi Minh then retired from public life but retained a role as special adviser to the Communist Party's central committee until December 1997.

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Section  : International
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