Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Kai will make his first official visit to Tokyo in March to seek more Japanese support for the Southeast Asian country's desperate efforts to overcome fallout from the continued regional economic crisis, government sources said Wednesday.
Although the governments of Japan and Vietnam have yet to fix specific dates for the official visit — the first by a Vietnamese premier in six years — it is most likely to occur between March 11 and March 13, the sources said.
Phan Van Kai succeeded Vo Van Kiet as premier in the reshuffle of the Vietnamese government leadership in September 1997. Vo Van Kiet visited Tokyo in the spring of 1993, just several months after Japan became the first major industrialized nation to resume full-scale economic aid for Vietnam in the autumn of 1992.