The Communist government for the first time has allowed the family of a high-level defector to go abroad to visit him and it is considering letting him return from China, an official said Saturday. The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the move was meant as a gesture of good will toward China before the visit of Deputy Foreign Minister Dinh Nho Liem to Beijing. It will be Liem's third round of talks in China on the Cambodian civil war and other barriers to normalizing ties between Vietnam and China. The Vietnamese government allowed the wife and daughter of 87-year-old defector Hoang Van Hoan _ a founding member of the Vietnamese Communist Party _ to travel to Beijing to visit him last month, the government official said. The decision was made by the Politburo, the highest body of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party, he said. The official also said the Chinese government last month asked Vietnam to let Hoan return home. No decision has been made, the official said. But he added, ``People tend to think it's about time to take him back; even some high-ranking officials think so.'' Hoan, a member of the Politburo from 1957 to 1976, was the first top Vietnamese leader to defect to China. Hoan disappeared at Karachi airport in Pakistan in July 1979. A month later he surfaced in Beijing, he attacked the Vietnamese party leadership, saying it was guilty of using ``Stalinist'' methods and abandoning friendship with China for the Soviet Union. Hoan called for a revolution in Vietnam. The Vietnamese official who spoke Saturday said Hoan had also published a Vietnamese-language newsletter critical of Hanoi while he was in China. Vietnam and China were allies during the Vietnam War, but they had a falling-out in 1978 over border disputes, Vietnam's treatment of its ethnic Chinese population and growing Vietnamese-Soviet ties. China launched a brief border attack in early 1979, saying it wanted to ``punish'' Vietnam for invading Cambodia and toppling the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge government. China continues to arm the Khmer Rouge and two other guerrilla groups now fighting the Vietnamese-installed government in Cambodia. However, relations with China have improved during Liem's three visits to Beijing over the past 15 months. An assistant Chinese foreign minister, Xu Dunxin, is to arrive in Hanoi on June 9 to continue the talks on Cambodia and normalizing relations. Xu will be leading the first senior Chinese delegation to Vietnam since 1979.
