Ex-Vietnam reformist PM hailed for daring

HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese leaders on Sunday eulogized former Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, regarded as a revolutionary, a force behind economic liberalization and helping to bring the communist-run country out of isolation.

Kiet, who was premier from 1991 to 1997 during the period when Vietnam restored diplomatic relations with former war enemy the United States and expanded ties in Europe and Asia, died on Wednesday at the age of 85.

"He had a spirit of daring to think and daring to do," Communist Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh said at the state funeral in the Reunification Palace in Ho Chi Minh City, which was broadcast live on state-run TV.

Top Communist Party officials, some wearing black suits and black ties, solemnly stood to attention in the front row of mourners before Kiet's coffin during the service. Relatives stood in black mourning clothes and white headbands.

The coffin was draped in Vietnam's red flag with a gold star and enclosed in a glass case for transportation on a gun carriage through city streets to the national cemetery for burial.

Saturday and Sunday were declared days of mourning with flags flying at half-mast at official buildings.

As the most senior southerner in the government during the mid-1990s, he was a leader of Vietnam's market-oriented economic changes known as "doi moi" -- meaning renewal or renovation. The changes began the overhaul of the Soviet-style system.

In a statement, current Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid tribute to Kiet as "a wholehearted, loyal, irrepressible and heroic Communist. All his life, all his heart and all his force was for the country and the people."

Out of office, Kiet remained active in politics, publishing commentaries pushing for more liberalization even as Vietnam joined the World Trade Organisation in 2007 and averaged annual GDP growth of 7.5 percent since 2000.

Born Phan Van Hoa on November 23, 1922 and known informally as Sau Dan, he joined the revolutionary movement against French colonial rule in 1938 at the age of 16. After an abortive uprising in 1940 he fled to the jungle and by 1945 was a cadre in the communist-led nationalist movement, the Viet Minh.

He went on to serve as the party's political commissar for Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and helped run the armed struggle against the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam, which fell in 1975.

(Reporting by Hanoi bureau)