Tran Do,

a retired lieutenant general who was Communist Vietnam's leading dissident, died Friday in Hanoi after more than a month of hospitalization for multiple ailments.

General Do, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former head of the Communist Party's ideology and culture department, was expelled from the party in January 1999 for saying the party should give up its monopoly on power. He had been under surveillance since then.

In June 2001, public security officials briefly detained General Do in Ho Chi Minh City, where he was visiting his son, and confiscated his memoirs.