Vietnam Leader Criticizes Self, Others as Party Congress Starts

Vietnamese Communist leader Truong Chinh opened a pivotal party congress Monday in Hanoi with blunt criticism of himself and other top leaders.

“The party Central Committee would like to seriously criticize itself for its own shortcomings before the congress,” Chinh was quoted by the Vietnam News Agency as telling more than 1,100 delegates to the congress.

Chinh, 79, who succeeded the late Le Duan in the top party post last summer, called for new economic reforms and warned against official corruption--unusually outspoken views for a Vietnamese leader despite a campaign of self-criticism that preceded this congress, the first since 1981.

“We must plan to purify the party and the administration and preserve the traditions of unity within party ranks,” he declared.

The reference to purity was interpreted by analysts here as an attack on corruption.

‘We Admit Mistakes’

“We frankly analyze and bravely admit the serious and long-lasting shortcomings and mistakes as concerns major viewpoints and policies, strategic guidance and organization of work,” he said.

Chinh was a close colleague of Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Vietnamese party and leader of the country’s independence movement, as are all the top officials in the Politburo at present. They are all in their late 70s and are expected to give way soon, perhaps at this congress, to men in their early 70s.

Chinh declared that “we must boldly renovate” management of the country’s near-moribund economy, but he stopped short of advocating the sort of free-wheeling incentive policies being pursued by some Communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

Another member of the Politburo, Vo Van Kiet, who is considered an economic reformer, told the delegates that “socialist and state economic elements will certainly play the main role, while other elements will be continually used at this stage (of development).”

Incentive Plan Failed

An incentive program introduced in Vietnamese business and industry last summer ran afoul of entrenched party bureaucracy in the factories and has failed to reach its goals for increased productivity. Earlier incentive programs in agriculture have proved more successful, but Kiet said that more has to be done. He set a target of 22 million to 23 million tons of grain by 1990. The 1985 output was less than 18 million tons.

Chinh declared that strong relations with the Soviet Union, which supplies an estimated $2 billion a year to Vietnamese military and civilian budgets, are a “cornerstone in the foreign policy of our party and state.”