The government may be succumbing to strong domestic political pressure to make Draconian cuts in Japanese official development assistance. If you want evidence, keep a close watch on an upcoming gathering of Vietnam's aid donors.

At an annual meeting of aid donors in Hanoi on Dec. 14-15, Japan will pledge fresh ODA worth between 70 billion yen and 80 billion yen for the Southeast Asian country, government sources said Friday.

That's sharply down from more than the 100 billion yen in ODA Japan committed for Vietnam last year.

As in the case of past Vietnam-bound ODA, low-interest yen loans will constitute the bulk of the fresh ODA to be pledged this month, although the exact size of fresh aid has yet to be fixed, the sources said.

Japan has retained its status as the world's largest single aid donor over the past nine years, providing more than $10 billion in ODA annually. Japanese ODA consists of low-interest yen loans, grants-in-aid and technical cooperation.

Japan resumed full-scale ODA for Vietnam in late 1992 after decades of suspension. Japan has since become Vietnam's largest single aid donor.

At each of the two previous annual meetings of Vietnam's aid donors, Japan pledged fresh ODA worth more than 100 billion yen for the Southeast Asian country.

"Given various factors, including the negative atmosphere surrounding ODA in domestic political circles, we will not be able to pledge as huge an amount of fresh ODA for Vietnam this year as we did last year," one government source said.

The forthcoming meeting of Vietnam's aid donors comes as pressure mounts from within the ruling coalition parties for sharp reductions in ODA to help nurse the deficit-laden national fiances back to health.

Shizuka Kamei, top policy chief of the Liberal Democratic Party, and his counterparts from the LDP's junior coalition partners -- New Komeito and the New Conservative Party -- agreed recently to consider slashing Japanese ODA by 30 percent, beginning in the new fiscal year that starts in April.

But government officials, including Foreign Minister Yohei Kono, have strongly objected to any major ODA reduction. Despite heavy domestic pressure for sharp cuts in overall Japanese ODA, the government officials are finding many allies abroad.

In their meeting with Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in Brunei late last month, many of the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Kai, asked Japan not to cut back on economic aid.

ASEAN groups Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.

But Japan's expected downsizing of Vietnam ODA may be just a conciliatory gesture toward the ruling coalition parties and may not actually affect Vietnam as much as the pledge might suggest.

In fact, the government sources said that the amount of fresh Vietnam ODA to be pledged this month will not include yen loans to be provided to Hanoi under a special three-year program that was introduced in April 1999 to help developing countries ransacked by the 1997-1998 Asian economic crisis.

Under the special program, 600 billion yen in special yen loans are to be provided to those developing countries -- on top of ordinary loans -- over three years until the end of fiscal 2001. The special loans are extended under more favorable terms than ordinary loans, including an extraordinarily low interest of 0.95 percent.

Said another government source: "Regardless of how much fresh ODA Japan will pledge for Vietnam this month, the size of Japanese ODA money Vietnam will actually receive over the next full year may turn out not to be so small, compared with the levels of the past two years."