We study the maximum integral multicommodity flow problem and the mini
mum multicut problem restricted to trees. This restriction is quite ri
ch and contains as special cases classical optimization problems such
as matching and vertex cover for general graphs. It is shown that both
the maximum integral multicommodity flow and the minimum multicut pro
blem are NP-hard and MAX SNP-hard on trees, although the maximum integ
ral flow can be computed in polynomial time if the edges have unit cap
acity. We present an efficient algorithm that computes a multicut and
integral flow such that the weight of the multicut is at most twice th
e value of the flow. This gives a 2-approximation algorithm for minimu
m multicut and a 1/2-approximation algorithm for maximum integral mult
icommodity how in trees.