By Andy Soloman

HANOI, March 11 (Reuters) - The arrest of a leading Vietnamese dissident in Hanoi was a sign the ruling Communist Party would tighten controls and clamp down on voices it deemed subversive, party officials and diplomats said on Thursday.

Geophysicist Nguyen Thanh Giang, 62, was arrested on March 4 in possession of documents considered anti-communist, party sources said.

Analysts and foreign diplomats said the move showed the party was determined to stamp out dissent, and that the arrest of Giang would send a clear threat to the growing ranks of dissatisfied senior party members.

``It's pretty significant,'' said one diplomat in Hanoi. ``It's the first arrest of a peaceful senior dissident for two or three years.''

Official Vietnamese comment on Giang's case was not immediately available, the foreign ministry told
Reuters.

Giang's whereabouts are currently unknown.

Sources said Giang, who is believed not to be a party member, had been a constant thorn in the communist party's side and run afoul of the authorities several times in recent years.

In May 1998 he was questioned for several days after distributing an anthology of poetry considered
subversive, the sources added.

He had previously written major texts, including the 1996 ``Human Rights -- A Thousand-Year Aspiration''
which inflamed the party through its claims that Marxism did not recognise human rights and that Vietnam was a dictatorship.

Sources said Giang was also in contact with General Tran Do, a retired life-long revolutionary who has called on the Communist Party to ``change or die.'' Do was expelled from the party in January and is believed to be under heavy surveillance.

Several other senior party and retired military figures have voiced support for Do, and condemned the party's heavy-handed treatment of the man who in the last year has become Vietnam's most prominent political dissident.

Diplomats said Giang's arrest was a clear message to Do and his supporters to cease anti-party activities.

Carl Thayer of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii said Giang's case showed Hanoi wanted to send a warning that jail loomed for those who dared criticise the regime.

The Tran Do affair had sparked mounting criticism of the party by veteran members, said Thayer, a long-time Vietnam watcher.

``There has been a whole range of these (dissenters) occuring bit by bit like water drops and somebody has decided it's time for the security apparatus to pull the plug as a warning...you are going to go to jail,'' he told Reuters.

The Communist Party monopolises power at all levels of society in Vietnam. In February it published a
resolution that ordered party members to toe the line or face strict punishment.

Another diplomat said hardline suppression would, in the short term at least, prevent dissidents from banding together to produce a united front.

``The policy of the party to dish out heavy-handed threats does contribute to keeping (party opponents)
fragmented,'' he said.

BBC World: Asia-Pacific (Wednesday, March 10, 1999)

Reports from Vietnam say a prominent dissident has been arrested in Hanoi for allegedly carrying documents critical of the Communist party.

The dissident, Nguyen Thanh Giang, was reportedy arrested earlier this month.

Mr Giang had called for democracy and political reform in his writings, which were published widely on the internet by Vietnamese people living overseas.

Correspondents say the arrest is the latest sign of a concerted effort by the Vietnamese authorities to counter dissent. The Communist party expelled General Tran Do over his attacks on party rule earlier this year.

HANOI, March 10 (AFP) - A renowned Vietnamese scientist has been arrested in Hanoi for allegedly carrying anti-party documents, a source said on Wednesday.  Nguyen Thanh Giang, 63, was arrested on March 4 in Hanoi by officers from the public security ministry who confiscated documents he was carrying and searched his house.

"He was arrested on the way to a post office and police found some anti-party documents on him and in his house," said the source who is an associate of Giang's. Giang's arrest is a setback for human rights advocates, and is the latest sign that the Communist Party intends to silence its critics. Earlier this year the party kicked out General Tran Do for his outspoken attacks on Communist rule.

Police were unable to confirm Giang's arrest, and his whereabouts were unknown. It was not possible to contact his family members on their telephone which sources say has been disconnected. Giang, who retired from the Hanoi Geology Bureau in 1996, had called for democracy and reform of the Vietnamese political system in writings, many of which have been widely diffused by overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu) groups on the Internet.

According to the Paris-based Viet Kieu group Free Vietnam Alliance, the scientist was also detained by police in March 1998, for alleged "distribution of reactionary documents."

His most recent writing made available outside Vietnam was a commentary on Vietnam's human rights record in December. He was never a member of the Communist Party.

The first sign this year that the party was cracking down on dissent came in early January when General Tran Do, an outspoken critic of its policies was stripped of his membership.

His expulsion coincided with the release of a report by Amnesty International on Thursday criticizing Vietnam's human rights record and a law that "criminalizes the right to freedom of expression."

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