Vietnam, China Reveal Meeting of Top Leaders : Diplomacy: The collapse of communism elsewhere has pressured the two nations to bury the hatchet. Cambodia has been a sticking point.

China and Vietnam, which fought a brief border war in 1979, have taken a major step toward reconciliation with a heretofore secret meeting between leaders of the two nations earlier this month.

Nguyen Van Linh, the Vietnamese Communist Party chief, Premier Do Muoi and former Premier Pham Van Dong met in China earlier this month with Chinese Premier Li Peng, and apparently also with the Chinese Communist Party general secretary, Jiang Zemin, diplomats in Beijing and Bangkok told reporters Monday.

One result of the changing Sino-Vietnamese relationship was rival Cambodian factions’ acceptance last week of a United Nations Security Council plan for ending the fighting in their nation. Beijing and Hanoi have backed opposing sides in Cambodia.

The U.N.-sponsored pact encompasses the establishment of a Supreme National Council, representing Cambodia’s Vietnam-backed government and its guerrilla opponents, to exercise Cambodian sovereignty while elections are arranged under U.N. auspices.

The council’s 12 members, accompanied by about 40 aides, met for the first time Monday at the Cambodian Embassy in Bangkok. No progress was reported after three hours of talks, but delegates said that a second session would meet this afternoon.

Another sign of Sino-Vietnamese reconciliation came Sunday, when 110 athletes from Vietnam traveled by train to Beijing. The group, to participate in the Asian Games set to begin in Beijing on Saturday, was the first large, official delegation to cross the land border since the 1979 war.

The official Voice of Vietnam radio reported Monday that a Lang Son Province official, speaking at a send-off ceremony for the athletes, said the event opened “a new possibility for the restoration of solidarity, friendship and good-neighborliness between the two peoples.”

Vietnamese Deputy Premier Vo Nguyen Giap will visit Beijing later this week, the Vietnamese radio said, and will attend the Asian Games as a “distinguished guest” of the Chinese government.

Although Beijing provided Hanoi with key support during the Vietnam War, the two nations split over the issue of Cambodia, which Vietnam invaded in late 1978 to oust the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime and install the current Phnom Penh government. China retaliated by attacking Vietnam in early 1979. In recent years, the two nations have also clashed over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, which both claim.

Hanoi has long sought an improvement in relations, but Beijing has insisted that ties could not be normalized without a settlement in Cambodia that included the withdrawal of all Vietnamese troops.

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the political liberalization sweeping the Soviet Union are pressuring leaders of Vietnam and China to settle their differences so that their nations might avoid similar upheavals.

Since mid-summer, amid signs that the Cambodian conflict was nearing a settlement, Chinese officials have indicated an easing of Sino-Vietnamese tensions.

Premier Li, during a visit to Singapore in August, said that “along with a settlement of the Cambodian question, China would like to normalize relations with Vietnam.”

The next day, Premier Muoi responded favorably to what he described as Li’s comments “on the normalization of Vietnamese relations and the settlement of disputes through peaceful negotiations.”

“These are actually what Vietnam has many times proposed, and of which Vietnam has always wished to see early materialization,” Muoi said. “Vietnam holds that the normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations fully meets the interests of the two peoples and will be an important contribution to consolidating peace and stability in the region.”