But country's top communist rebuffs calls for more freedom

Concluding a historic visit, U.S. President Bill Clinton urged this communist nation Sunday to open its economy and allow greater individual freedoms, saying the rewards of a free-market system "should be embraced, not feared." But the nation's top Communist Party official told him, in politer terms, to mind his own business. After a two-day visit to Hanoi where he nurtured long-bitter U.S.-Vietnam relations and got the Communist Party's upbeat view of post-war Vietnam from the party's top leader, Clinton arrived in the city once known as Saigon to cheers of thousands of people who lined the streets late at night. In the final hours of the president's visit to the country, Clinton stopped at a shipping dock on the Saigon River. Under the shadow of two giant cranes, he spoke at a container terminal that is a joint venture between a Vietnamese state-owned company and a multinational firm.Clinton said Vietnam's own government acknowledges that state-owned enterprises cannot create enough jobs for Vietnam, one of the poorest countries in the world with an average annual income of $372. Vietnam's Communist Party chief brushed aside Clinton's calls for greater political openness and more extensive economic reform, making clear it was not the business of the United States to lecture Vietnam. In comments to Clinton at a meeting on Saturday in Hanoi, which a senior U.S. official described as "the language of old socialism," Le Kha Phieu reminded the United States that Vietnam had fought a long war to end occupation by "imperialists."