HANOI - FORMER Vietnam Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, a major force behind economic reforms started in the late 1980s, died on Wednesday, his family said. He was 85.

Relatives said he died in a Singapore hospital of acute pneumonia and his body would be returned to Vietnam.

Born on Nov 23, 1922, in the southern Mekong Delta, Kiet served as prime minister from 1991 until he stepped down to be replaced by his former deputy Phan Van Khai in September 1997.

In his term as premier, and as the most senior southerner in the ruling Communist Party and government, Mr Kiet was a leader in the Southeast Asian country's market-oriented economic reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s which started to replace a failed Soviet-style system. -- REUTERS