The last week of August sees some remarkable events in Vietnam. Firstly, the Communist Army General Vo Nguyen Giap celebrated his birthday (August 25, 1911) with official visits by all top Communist leaders who delivered well-wishing speeches and eulogies that had long been unheard of since the late 1970's. Secondly, Giap met with the democracy activist, Communist retired General Tran Do.

The party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh paid an official call on Giap on August 24, to congratulate him on his birthday. Other leaders, including Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Van An, some Army generals, and a delegation from his home province, Quang Binh, also visited him, with similar praising statements. State President Tran Duc Luong on the trip in South Korea, sent Giap a bouquet along with a letter expressing his esteem to the 90-year-old Communist veteran.

Giap is known by many journalists and scholars as a skilled strategist, even a great general of the century, or at least the conqueror of Dien Bien Phu. But after the 1968 Tet Offensive, his fame has been fading and his role in the party dwindling. Though too old to work, he is still a four-star general. He always appears in dress uniform.

Though Giap has been the topic of hundreds of articles and books, most Western writers are missing important parts of his personality and his controversial role in the Communist victories in the wars.

Giap has the manners more of a professor or an ideologist, not a military top leader. His furtive glances

reflects his complex and his lack of military tradition and manner. Such manners can be acquired only from military formal training, which he has not.

In war, all decisions concerning military strategic objectives and operation plans must be unanimously approved by the Politburo and are considered its collective works. The government ministers only have to implement them. In the 1946-54 Resistance War, Giap was idolized as a military genius for propaganda purpose but his role was actually an executive. His only eminent character in the Communist military career was the way he took care of his subordinate commanders.

Giap is still referred to as "Brother Van" by his former friends and inferiors. He won the sympathy of his troops particularly in the 1950's. But since the early 1960's, Nguyen Chi Thanh, the general and top leader of the Central Office for South Vietnam of the Party Central Committee, overtook Giap and earned the NVA soldiers' higher affection. Thanh died in 1967 and his death is still an unsolved mystery.

Hanoi's victories relied on the several efforts. The participation of the whole Communist Party, which provided full supports in propaganda, troops indoctrination, conscription, intelligence information, transportation of weapons and ammunition and foods, was the most important. NVA divisions had just to fight without worrying about resupplies or collecting enemy information. Therefore, Giap's responsibility was only partial, allegedly less than 50 percent compared to that of his counterparts in non-communist armed forces.

In the pure military aspect, under the basic war policies of the Politburo, Giap was squandering unlimited human lives in the battles. North Vietnam at the time was overpopulated and had a very large reserve of human power that supported the Communist Party and Giap in implementing their objective "victory at all costs."

In 1997, Hanoi officially admitted that its side had lost 1.1 million troops in war against South Vietnam, The true figure must be much higher. South Vietnamese Armed Forces suffered about 230,000 killed in action, including the Popular Force (or village militia) while more than 58,000 Americans fell on the Vietnam soil.

The 1968 Tet Offensive was a turning point of Giap military career. Independent sources in Hanoi allege that Giap was against the military plan to launch the general offensive. But all other 18 members voted for the campaign. At last, the offensive failed, with 500,000 Communist soldiers killed. Giap confirmed this figure in an interview with the famous Italian journalist, Ms. Oriana Fallaci, in 1969.

He then was deprived of real power as the commander-in-chief. Actual command was given to Van Tien Dung, chief of the general staff. Giap committed the second perilous mistake, expressing his opposition to the Politburo's decision to invade Cambodia in 1978. To make it worse, Giap overtly disclosed his opinion to his close friends outside the central committee. Shortly after the invasion, Hanoi troops got stuck in Cambodia and that proved Giap was correct for the second time. But it was the last time he spoke as a minister of Defense.

He was kicked out of the Politburo and the Ministry of Defense in 1986, remaining in the cabinet as a vice-premier in charge of family planning. Humorists in Hanoi were circulating a poem that includes the two lines, loosely translated into English as "Once a general of national defense, now the general is defending the wombs." In 1991, he lost even such humble post. He was living in silence since, rarely seen in public.

On August 22, Giap paid a visit to retired General Tran Do, who was in the Friendship Hospital for treatment. Many high ranking veterans followed suit.

Tran Do has been a fervent dissident who has been tirelessly writing political essays, statements and open letters to Communist leaders, bitterly denouncing the regime of incapability and the out-of-date Marxist-Leninism. He is demanding that Article 4 of the 1992 Constitution be abolished. This article gives the governing power only to the Communist Party. Do was stripped of his party membership in 1999 and has been put under house arrest. Last month, Public Security Department in Saigon confiscated his diary of about 80 pages.

Giap's birthday celebration as well as Giap's and others' visits to Tran Do might be indications of some possible changes in the Vietnam Communist Party. That the Communist Party and its government are going to amend its constitution gives people more reasons to expect some changes.

It's possible that Vo Nguyen Giap could be prepared to be appointed to some position in the government in order to reactivate the people's extremely high spirit during the first years of the War of Resistance (1945-49). The morale of the Party members, soldiers and Public Security troops is going down in the last decade and the party leaders are afraid of internal unsettled conflicts that might lead to serious consequences. The leaders might feel necessary to calm down the former Communist Party cadres and leaders who have been forgotten for the last 26 years.

Among dissenting party members, Tran Do is the most prominent person. His opposition has drawn a larger and larger number of his comrades to step to his side. Giap might be visiting Do to persuade him into some peaceful settlement.

Or the Party leaders just want to revive Giap's reputation before he should pass away at any time. The old general health is on the way down with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and other less serious sicknesses.

After the former Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Vietnamese in Vietnam and abroad were talking about Giap becoming a Vietnamese "Gorbachev." But most of them do not believe that with his nature, Vo Nguyen Giap would be able to become one.

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