Vo Van Kiet:THE FORMER Vietnamese prime minister Vo Van Kiet, who has died in hospital in Singapore following a stroke aged 85, will be remembered as the architect of the communist nation's economic transformation in the 1990s, lifting the country out of its prolonged post-war stagnation.
Born into a peasant family in the southern Vinh Long province, his birth name was Phan Van Hoa.
He changed it to Vo Van Kiet when he joined the Indochinese Communist party in 1939, but he also had a nickname, Sau Dan.
In total, he fought the French and Americans for nearly four decades.
As a member of the communist-led Viet Minh independence movement, he fought the French in the first Indochina war (1946- 1954) in southern Vietnam, and then, following the division of the country according to the Geneva accords of 1954, he became the party's political commissar for Saigon in 1958.
He became a full member of the Communist Party central committee in 1972.
During the war against the US, he was political officer of the NLF (National Liberation Front, also known as the Viet Cong). After the defeat of the Americans in 1975, he became Communist Party chief in Ho Chi Minh City (the renamed Saigon) from 1976 to 1982.
He urged caution in Hanoi's attempts to impose state control over the private economy of the south. Hardliners in Hanoi did not listen. The private sector was largely prohibited.
It was only in the mid-1980s that the advice of the economic reformers from the south was desperately sought, to rescue the nation from sliding into even worse poverty.
Kiet also won considerable respect for his admission in an interview in 1995 that the soldiers and families linked to the pro-US army of South Vietnamese regimes had not been properly respected, and full national reconciliation had not taken place.
In 1982, he was promoted to vice-premier and became chairman of the state planning commission. In 1987, he was appointed first deputy prime minister and became acting prime minister in 1988 after the sudden death of Pham Hung.
He was elected prime minister in 1991 by the national assembly, with a mandate to implement the policy of doi moi (renovation) introduced by his mentor, former Communist Party chief Nguyen Van Linh, another veteran of the Viet Cong underground.
The private sector was gradually unshackled and the public sector reinvigorated in a thorough shake-up of a hitherto moribund state-run economy.
The ebullient and energetic Kiet was the first Vietnamese leader to travel widely since the European tour in the 1970s of Pham Van Dong, prime minister of the reunified country from 1976 until he retired in 1987.
In both Europe and Asia, Kiet expanded diplomatic and trading ties with many countries and helped to spur international aid and foreign investment.
His first wife and children were killed in an American bombing raid, but after the war, he married an outstanding scientist with a PhD, Phan Luong Cam.
During Kiet's time as premier, the US lifted embargoes against Vietnam and in 1995, Washington finally normalised its relationship with Hanoi.
Fierce opposition though from vested interests within the party and army, especially after he circulated a memo in 1995 urging bolder reforms, prompted him to step down in 1997. His parting shot was that the country badly needed a transfer of power to younger leaders.
Kiet was much more than just an economic reformer. In his capacity as a former prime minister and influential adviser, he was an outspoken critic, arguing for a free press and dialogue with dissidents.
He also broke fresh ground in expressing remorse for all those who died in the war, including former battlefield enemies.
On the eve of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the triumph in Saigon in April 2005, Kiet, a southerner, commented on the feelings in Ho Chi Minh City.
Not everyone was celebrating, he told the Vietnamese media.
"When mentioning the war, a million people feel happy, but another million feel miserable."
He also said in an interview with the BBC last year that he questioned the orthodoxy that only Communist Party members were true patriots.
He was a rare leader who dared to say things other people were afraid to express publicly.
His second wife survives him.
Vo Van Kiet (Phan Van Hoa, aka Sau Dan): born November 23rd 1922; died June 11th 2008.