Huynh Tan Phat, 76; Viet Cong Leader

Huynh Tan Phat, a former high official of the provisional revolutionary government of South Vietnam, a top political leader of the Viet Cong and later a senior official in the Hanoi government, has died of a brain hemorrhage after a long illness, Hanoi radio announced Tuesday. He was 76.

Phat died in a Ho Chi Minh City hospital Saturday “as a result of a brain hemorrhage caused by high blood pressure,” said the broadcast, monitored in Bangkok.

During a long career, Phat had served as a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, as chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and as vice president.

The brief radio announcement made no mention of Phat’s important role during the Vietnam War as political leader of the Viet Cong.

Phat was born in the Mekong River Delta area of southern Vietnam and lived most of his early life in Saigon.

According to his official biography, he joined the Communist Party in 1945 and participated in the August revolution that brought the party briefly to power after the surrender of the Japanese at the end of World War II.

He spent two years in prison in Saigon for agitating against the French return to power in Vietnam. Following his release he worked as an undercover communist agent for two years before going into the jungle to join the armed insurgency in 1949.

After the departure of the French in 1954, Phat worked as an architect in Saigon until he escaped a political crackdown by then President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1959 and again went into the jungle with the National Liberation Front, whose military arm was the Viet Cong.

Phat worked in the underground political organization fighting the U.S.-backed government, rising steadily through a series of posts.

In 1964 he became secretary-general of the National Liberation Front and thus officially the top communist leader in southern Vietnam, although more power was held by senior leaders from the north.

With the Communist victory over the pro-American regime in 1975, Phat was named president of the short-lived Republic of South Vietnam. When the republic was merged with North Vietnam in 1976 he became deputy prime minister of the reunited country.