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<BASE HREF=3D"file:/tmp_mnt/home/nguyent/MacData/nyt/congress"> <html> <head> <title>Vietnam's Communist Party Plans No Big Changes</title> <meta name=3D"publish" content=3D"EarlysenD"> <meta name=3Dslug content=3DBC-VIETNAM-NYT> <meta name=3Ddate content=3D06-28> <meta name=3Dlength content=3D0998> </head> <body bgcolor=3D#ffffff> <nobr><a href=3D"index.html"><img src=3D"/images/bannewin.gif" border=3D0 a= lt=3Dbanner></a> <!--ELEMENT HEAD ADVT--> <!--Head Ad Goes Here--> </nobr> <br><a href=3D"/images/toolbar.map"><img src=3D"/images/toolbar.gif" border= =3D0 alt=3Dtoolbar ismap></a> <blockquote><blockquote> <h5>June 29, 1996</h5><br> <h2>Vietnam's Communist Party Plans No Big Changes</h2> <h5>By SETH MYDANS</h5> <b></b> <p> <img src=3D"/images/h.gif" align=3Dleft alt=3DH>ANOI, Vietnam -- Af= ter weeks of backstage wrangling, Vietnam's Communist Party has decided to keep its aged troika of top leaders in place but to lighten their responsibilities and shorten their terms, a senior Central Committee member said Friday. <p> The pivotal Communist Party Congress opened Friday with no indications of large-scale political changes as it gropes toward a formula for a more open, market-oriented economy. <p> "We don't have aspirations to be an economic tiger," the committee member, Do Phuong, said in an interview. "We want to have stable, steady targets that we can fulfill. We are not extremists. We will see the reality in the future, and on the way forward if we see measures that are better, we will try to take them." <p> Phuong, who is director general of the Vietnam News Agency, said there would be no reversal of the country's policy of economic liberalization, or "doi moi," which has brought dramatic economic growth rates of more than 8 percent for the last five years. <p> But in the continuing tug of war between firm party control and the rough and tumble of a free market, he said, Vietnam would continue to exercise caution and pragmatism. <p> This approach has left some international political analysts frustrated by the country's ambivalence, its maddening multilevel bureaucracy, its corruption and its lack of a reliable legal system. <p> "Vietnam's reforms, begun with a bang, are turning into whimpers," says a book to be published by the Harvard Institute for International Development titled "Transition Under Threat." <p> The three men who Phuong said would remain at the top "for the time being" have been largely responsible for the pace of reform so far -- the Communist Party general secretary, Do Muoi, 79; President Le Duc Anh, 75, and Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, 73. <p> "But they will not remain with their full formal responsibilities for their full terms of five years," Phuong said. "After several discussions we came to a final result: They will transfer their work regularly so there will be no instability." <p> He said that they might retain their posts for a year or two more and that the election of a new National Assembly next year with word 'help' in message body netnews@sift.stanford.edu