Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=7/11/01

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=VIETNAM / NORTH KOREA / FOOD (L-only)

NUMBER=2-278096

BYLINE=HUW WATKIN

DATELINE=HANOI

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: A senior North Korean leader, Kim Yong Nam, is in Hanoi today -- the highest ranking North Korean visitor to Vietnam in nearly 40 years. Huw Watkin has more on this story from Hanoi.

TEXT: Kim Yong Nam, the president of North Korea's National Assembly, is expected to be seeking food aid for his famine-stricken country, as well as repairing ties between the two Communist nations.

Relations between Vietnam and North Korea have soured in the last decade, since Hanoi established diplomatic relations with South Korea, which is now one of the largest foreign investors here.

Mr. Kim is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit Vietnam since 1964. Before he arrived, Pyongyang announced publicly for the first time that it sent fighter pilots and substantial military aid to help North Vietnam fight U-S forces in the 1960s and early '70s.

Analysts say disclosure of the wartime military assistance may have been timed to assist Mr. Kim's requests for food aid. Vietnam is the world's second-biggest producer of rice, desperately needed by North Korea, which has been ravaged for years by natural disasters, famine and economic mismanagement.

But Hanoi, which regards rice as a strategic commodity that should be tightly controlled, has played down its ability to help. A Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman (Phan Thuy Thanh) says the wartime assistance was appreciated, but any food aid will have to be considered in a "realistic context."

Foreign diplomats here say they believe Mr. Kim will also be looking at Vietnam's economic reform agenda as a possible model towards ending North Korea's international isolation.

They say North Korea's leadership is keen to study how the Vietnamese Communist Party has managed to stay in power since adopting capitalist reforms 15 years ago.

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Mr. Kim is also likely to press the North's views on the issue of Korean reunification, which is expected to be discussed at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi later this month. (Signed)

NEB/HK/HW/JO/WTW