Hanoi - Vietnam's once-sizzling inflation rate slowed for the second straight month in October, but Vietnamese economists said Monday the government should not yet declare victory.

"I am not reassured by the low inflation figure from October, because it doesn't prove that the government's tight monetary policy has succeeded," said Tran Duc Nguyen, an economist and informal government adviser.

Vietnam's consumer price index fell 0.2 per cent in October after rising 0.2 per cent in September. The figures bolstered a trend that has seen inflation fall since hitting a month-on-month high of 3.9 percent in May.

Overall, prices have risen 26.7 per cent since last October.

Moscow  - Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet held talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and other top Russian officials at the Kremlin on Monday to boost trade and energy ties.

The talks including the head of Russian energy giant Gazprom Alexei Miller and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were expected to touch joint development of Vietnam's offshore oil reserves.

"In the last years many good and successful projects have been realized between us. These have been in the oil and gas sphere, power industry and the mining sector," Medvedev told journalists ahead of the talks, news agency Interfax reported.

Hanoi - A fire Monday at Ho Chi Minh City's airport caused authorities to close its domestic terminal, but no one was injured, firefighters said.

"The blaze at Tan Son Nhat Airport started on the ground floor of the terminal building," said Lt Col Nguyen Van Bang, head of the Ho Chi Minh City Fire Department. "It took us more than 2 hours to extinguish it."

Authorities closed the airport's domestic terminal for 24 hours, beginning at 5 am Monday. The closure will be extended if the damage cannot be repaired.

All passengers at the domestic terminals were moved to the international terminal to continue their flights.

Hanoi- Vietnam's trade deficit in the first ten months of the year hit a record 16.3 billion dollars, up 77 per cent from a year earlier, local media report on Friday.

While the country's exports did rise, with total revenues of 53.8 billion dollars, up 36.7 per cent year-on-year, it spent 70.1 billion dollars on imports, up 42.6 per cent over the same period last year.

These preliminary figures were issued by the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Hanoi - The world's biggest rice importing and exporting nations met in Vietnam on Friday and approved a plan targeting problems triggered during this year's rice price crisis.

Ministers of agriculture from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi to endorse a seven-point action plan developed earlier this year when prices of rice shot up to a record high of 1,000 dollars a ton last April, triggering a world food crisis.

Stockholm - The Swedish government Thursday formally decided to halt an adoption programme with Vietnam over fears of irregularities.

Health and Social Affairs Minister Goran Hagglund said the decision hinged on the government's concern that "the rights of the individual child and biological parents are taken into account."

Hagglund's statement issued after the cabinet meeting said there were "disturbing signals" that children may even have been trafficked.

In September, the United States suspended adoptions from Vietnam over similar concerns.