The World - News from May 2, 1985

China and Vietnam’s ex-trade ministers met in Peking for the first known high-level private talks between the neighbors since their 1979 border war, Western diplomats said. Vietnam’s Phan Anh, in Peking for a U.N. conference on Palestine, met Li Qiang, who supervised Chinese aid and trade with Vietnam in 1973-78. Senior Chinese and Vietnamese officials have met in public before, but the private meeting “is what the Chinese would do if they wanted to start a dialogue,” one diplomat said. “It is something important.”