Hun Sen: Withdraw troops or face conflict

The Bangkok Post

Cambodia yesterday told Thailand to immediately withdraw troops from the disputed border area near the Preah Vihear temple or risk a “ large-scale armed conflict” .

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told reporters in Phnom Penh that he had warned Thailand’s visiting Foreign Minister Sompong Amornvivat that without a quick pullout, Thai soldiers could face being fired upon by Cambodian troops, in a further escalation of long-simmering tensions.

“ If they cannot withdraw tonight, they must withdraw tomorrow,” said Hun Sen.

“ We have tried to be patient, but I told the Thai foreign minister today that the area is a life-and-death battle zone.”

 

 

His comments came after talks with Mr Sompong in Phnom Penh.

Mr Sompong also met with his counterpart Hor Namhong in a bid to resolve the dispute over the area near the ancient Preah Vihear temple.

The Cambodian foreign minister said yesterday’s talks failed to end in agreement because his Thai opposite number “ could not sign anything” .

Hun Sen and Hor Namhong both told reporters that Cambodia could choose to take the border dispute before an international court if it was not resolved soon.

The comments made by the Cambodian prime minister and foreign minister surprised Mr Sompong and Thai officials, who were adamant that the meetings had not been a failure.

Mr Sompong said the tone during the meetings between the two countries had been different as the Cambodian leaders agreed that both sides had to be patient in resolving the border spat.

He said no Thai troop withdrawals would be made from the 4.6 sq km overlapping area between Kantharalak district in Si Sa Ket and Preah Vihear province of Cambodia until the dispute over ownership is cleared through negotiations in the Joint Boundary Commission that was set up to demarcate the land border.

Thailand reiterated its ownership over the area, Mr Sompong said in Bangkok and rushed to report the talks to Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat.

Suranaree Task Force commander Maj-Gen Kanok Netrakavaesana will hold talks with his Cambodian counterpart tomorrow on the border issues and the Thai and Cambodian defence ministers will meet next Tuesday , according to Mr Sompong.

Cambodian Deputy Defence Minister Gen Neang Phat said more Cambodian troops were heading to the area after up to 500 Thai soldiers had tried to cross the border near an ancient Hindu temple that is claimed by both countries.

“ We are building up our troops at the border in response to Thailand, but I cannot reveal the number,” he told reporters.

Maj-Gen Srey Deok, who oversees the Cambodian military in the disputed area, said: “ Thai troops have already entered the area. They are confronting our troops.”

But Maj-Gen Kanok denied that more troops had been sent to the disputed area near the Preah Vihear temple.

Thailand and Cambodia have 10 soldiers each at the Keo Sikha Kiri Svara pagoda near the Preah Vihear temple and 45 around the compound on joint patrol, according to the agreement between the two countries to ease border tension.

The two countries also have back-up troops near the border.

The number of soldiers there remained unchanged, Maj-Gen Kanok said.

Maj-Gen Kanok slammed Cambodia for distorting information and taking advantage of the political crisis in Thailand to launch an offensive move for its own political benefit.

The Suranaree chief, his patience wearing thin, called for a quick solution to the border spat and a clear direction to be provided by the government as it could become an armed conflict if it was left unsettled.

“ I want the government to solve this problem and make it clear what to do. If it is left this way, nobody knows what is going to happen,” he said.

Tensions between Thailand and Cambodia first flared in July after the Preah Vihear temple was awarded World Heritage status by the World Heritage Committee.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that the temple belongs to Cambodia, but the surrounding land remains in dispute.

Tensions escalated into a military confrontation in which up to 1,000 Cambodian and Thai troops faced off for six weeks.

The two countries have swapped accusations of violating each other’s territory in the dispute.

Hun Sen elected as Cambodian PM for five more years

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia’s parliament re-elected Hun Sen as prime minister Thursday, extending his 23-year grip on power, at a session boycotted by parties disputing the results of the July general election.

Only 94 of the 123 elected members of parliament showed up, and unanimously raised their hands to approve the nomination of the parliament’s president and the new government.

Hun Sen promised before the session that his government would use its new five-year term to “ accelerate development and push for deep and wide reforms” of the southeast Asian nation.

His Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) took 90 seats in the July 27 election, while the main opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) received 26 seats.

The royalist parties — Funcinpec and the Norodom Ranariddh Party — picked up two seats each, and the Human Rights Party (HRP) three seats.

SRP and HRP lawmakers did not attended Thursday’s session and have claimed widespread irregularities in the July poll.

The opposition leaders could not be immediately reached for comment.

The CPP’s overwhelming majority in parliament means this year is the first time since 1993 that the country has not been left in political deadlock after an election.

The previous general election, in July 2003, led to a year of stalemate as parties wrangled over forming a coalition government.

Hun Sen has a reputation for trampling on human rights to secure power, but a booming economy has bolstered his standing in a country still struggling to lift itself from the ranks of the world’s poorest.

PM appoints own daughter to assist him in new govt

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Cheang Sokha

Hun Mana, the director general of Bayon Television and Radio, will help her father to make ‘proper reports’ HENG CHIVOAN Hun Mana, shown in a file photo, has just been made assistant to the PM. PRIME Minister Hun Sen has appointed his daughter, Hun Mana, as an assistant to his office in the new government, one of her colleagues at Bayon TV said Tuesday. Rith Chetra, deputy director general at Bayon TV who was also appointed an assistant to the prime minister, said that during the fourth mandate of the government, Hun Sen “ will have a lot to do and needs more assistants” . “ I don’t know what kind of job I will help him with until the new government is formed,” he added. The new government is expected to be formed on September 24. Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said that the appointment of Hun Mana was based on her position at Bayon and that she would help the prime minister in writing “ proper reports” . “ The public dare not comment to government officials, so they use radio and TV [to] bring their issues to the prime minister,” Khieu Kanharith said. Cambodian People’s Party ministers have in the past appointed their relatives as assistants. Both Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong and Social Affairs Minister Ith Samheng sent their sons to work at the Ministry Cabinet offices. Hun Sen has previously come under fire for appointing multiple advisers and assistants – the distinction between titles pertains to whether the appointee helps with idea generation or workflow. Opposition Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Son Chhay said that the ruling party wastes a lot of state budget on advisers and assistants, adding that Hun Sen has roughly 1,000 people helping in those positions. He claimed that most of them do little for their official capacities. Ho Sothy, Hun Sen’s Cabinet chief, declined to comment.

The leader who goes on and on

www.guardian.co.uk

Hu Sen brought peace to Cambodia but he has sacrificed the poor on the altar of an economic boom

With yet another election victory in the bag, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, is now entering his thirty-fourth year in power. Hun Sen draws his inspiration not from south-east Asia’s more democratic leaders, but from Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who used dictatorial methods to build a modern, prosperous but tightly-controlled island city-state. Still only 57, Hun Sen has now served two years longer than Lee Kuan Yew – and even muses that he could still be premier at 90 if the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) keeps winning elections. It is this prospect, however fanciful, that alarms many educated Cambodians.

Trade unionists, opposition parties, and human rights workers have well-founded fears that this landslide election victory could lead to a clampdown on the right to protest and strike in Cambodia – human rights that were crushed long ago in Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew’s notorious Internal Security Act.

Hun Sen is the son of a poor farming family in Kompong Cham province, and a former Khmer Rouge officer who rebelled against Pol Pot, fled to Vietnam in 1977 and returned two years later as foreign minister, backed by the Vietnamese army. Still younger than any of his Asean counterparts, he now ranks as their most experienced prime minister. And he achieved all this despite losing an eye in the final battle to defeat the US-backed military regime of General Lon Nol back in 1975.

Only Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s rule in the 1960s can be compared with Hun Sen’s in terms of its strong leadership and its success in defining the politics and development of the country. Between these two eras, the nation was brought to the brink of extinction by the secret US bombing of Cambodia authored by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, which ultimately helped Pol Pot’s forces to seize power.

Now, after a period of survival in the 1980s – moulded in part by Vietnamese communism mixed with a revival of Cambodian culture – everything is changing. The free market reigns supreme. Land and property speculation is everything, heritage is for sale, and the US dollar is king. Land that was owned by poor farmers in the 1980s is now up for grabs – and indeed frequently is grabbed by a few tycoons linked to Hun Sen. The PM is generally regarded as part of a nouveau riche kleptocracy that siphons off foreign aid and ignores protests about human rights. But defenders of the CPP, and many of the people who have just voted for it, would point out that under his leadership the country is now at peace. Schools, roads and bridges have been built. The economy is booming, and the CPP has been justly rewarded. Few international observers seriously doubt that the democratic will swung behind the CPP, even allowing for unbalanced TV media coverage. (Unlike neighbouring countries, all Cambodia elections since 1993 have been monitored by international observers.)

In the 1980s Hun Sen – who was widely derided as a Vietnamese puppet at the time – had two priorities. The first was to stop the Khmer Rouge from returning to power (they were backed militarily by China and diplomatically by the west). The second was to rebuild a shattered nation.

The fragile government in Phnom Penh not only kept Pot’s forces at bay, but their Vietnamese backers speedily restored some basic services. After 1979 hospitals, schools, markets, Buddhist temples and cinemas – closed by the Khmer Rouge – were rapidly reopened by Hun Sen’s government. Hun Sen initiated peace talks with Cambodia’s exiled Prince Sihanouk, which eventually led to his return. He proved to be an inspirational leader, but much western reporting during the Cold War focused on the partisan belief that Cambodia was under foreign occupation. There was an abysmal failure to report the real story of a nation’s dramatic recovery, despite the UN’s cynical denial of aid to a desperately poor country.

I first met Hun Sen in 1981, and respect his achievements in helping to bring about the rebirth of his nation and ending the Khmer Rouge terror in the countryside. But from the point of view of public services and the treatment of the poor, his record since the 1993 elections leaves a great deal to be desired. His failure to build an equitable Cambodian society that all can share in, based on social and economic justice – not just a real estate boom – is lamentable.

It is strange that Hun Sen, who shares his humble beginnings with Brazil’s Lula and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, has no agenda for the poor, no instinct to curb the grotesque excesses of the ruling elite, and has made no attempt to protect the small farmers that he is descended from. For all his intelligence and political skills, Hun Sen’s success was based on survival, not a vision of the future. Bolstered by the recent discovery of offshore oil, the CPP has no development model other than the prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, which are easily grafted onto the corruption and get rich-quick mentality of his business cronies, military generals and his police chiefs.

If he had gracefully stepped down from power in 1998,
after the final surrender of the Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen’s place in history would surely have been assured. Unless he changes tack, the dispossessed may have to resort to other means to achieve justice.

Hun Sen nominates US agents for awards

The Phnom Penh Post
Written by Cheang Sokha and Porter Barron

THE Royal Government has nominated five agents of the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation and one from its Internal Revenue Service to receive medals of appreciation for the investigation that led to the arrest of Chhun Yasith, mastermind of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters’ failed but bloody coup in 2000.

In response to a request by Minister of Interior Sar Kheng, Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a sub-decree on June 10 authorising issuance of the medals to FBI agents Robert Cahill, Robert Burkes, Laro Tan, Miguel Luna and Donald Shannon, as well as IRS official Jeff Clark.

A US embassy spokesman said Thursday that the agents had not yet received the medals.

“ We know they’ve been nominated for the award, but other than that we don’t know anything,” John Johnson said.

The FBI arrested Chhun Yasith, a 51-year-old accountant, and his wife at their home in Long Beach, a city south of Los Angeles.

On April 16, a US court found Chhun Yasith guilty of violating that country’s Neutrality Act, which prohibits conspiring to kill or damage property on foreign soil, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. His wife will be tried separately.

Moek Dara, chief of the Interior Ministry’s Anti-Narcotics Department, said Thursday that he had worked closely with the FBI for many years in his former position as chief of the Penal Department to see Chhun Yasith brought to justice.

“ The FBI provided huge assistance in the Chhun Yasith case,” he told the Post.

Thailand welcomes Hun Sen’s call for peace

Thailand on Friday welcomed Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s wills to peacefully resolve the border conflict around Preah Vihear temple through existing bilateral mechanisms.

Hun Sen expressed the wishes on Wednesday to end the border disputes with Thailand on bilateral basis and through peaceful means following the military stand off since the mid of last month.

Thai Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday to welcome Hun Sen’s stance, saying it also wished to find a solution to the issue of the Temple of Preah Vihear in a peaceful and amicable manner.

The statement said the issue should make full use of the existing bilateral mechanisms, including meetings between the two Foreign Ministers, the Thai-Cambodian Joint Boundary Commission (JBC) and the General Border Committee (GBC).

Foreign ministers of the two countries would hold their second meeting on border dispute in the third week of this month in resort beach of Hua Hin.

Both countries agreed to redeploy troops around the areas following the fist meeting between foreign minister Tej Bunnag and his Cambodia counterpart Hor Namhong in Siem Reap late last month.

Differences of views on boundary issues between two neighbouring countries are not unusual, the Thai foreign ministry’s statement said.

This issue is just one small part of the overall relations between Thailand and Cambodia.  The two countries have a myriad of common interests and wide-ranging cooperation in the economic, political, social and other dimensions, it said.

Source: The Nation

Hun sen insists Thais must pull back first

By The Nation, Agencies
Published on July 30, 2008

Army chief says withdrawal will take time; govts still trying diplomacy

Phnom Penh -Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen placed the ball firmly in Thailand’s court over the Preah Vihear issue, saying it was up to Bangkok to decide on withdrawing troops from the border.

Speaking to reporters in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen indicated that Thailand would have to pull out first.

“ For us, there is no problem at all. The issue is that it is up to Thailand to decide to act. For us, [we are ready] any time,” he said.

“ The problem is the timing and how long it will take the Thai side to get a political decision from the govฌernment.”

His comments came one day after Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and his Thai counterpart Tej Bunnag held talks on Monday in Siem Reap with a handful of top milฌitary officials from both countries.

The two countries agreed in prinฌciple to a redeployment of troops from the area near the 11thcentury Preah Vihear temple, where thousands of soldiers have been facing off for two weeks. After about 12 hours of talks, the foreign ministers said they would ask their governments to redeploy the troops.

Although the territorial disฌpute was not solved, the two sides agreed to continue to use “ utmost restraint” to avoid an armed confrontation and to continue discussions on a bilateral basis.

Thailand’s Army chief conฌfirmed that any withdrawal from the border area would take time.

“ The resolution from the meeting between Cambodia and Thailand [on Monday] will help relieve tension and improve the situation,” Anupong Paojinda said by phone.

“ Reducing the troops at the border, however, needs an order from the govฌernment first.”

But Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej sought to reassure the public, telling reporters: “ The Foreign Ministry is talking to the milฌitary. Everything is fine.”

“ Both sides are convinced that the bilateral mechanism is still there for us to utilise,” said Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat.

Prior to the Siem Reap meeting, Cambodia had appealed to both Asean and the United Nations Security Council to intervene in the border row. More than 1,500 troops from the two countries have been disฌpatched to the area.

“ We carry pens and pencils,” said Tharit. “ We cannot speak for those who carry guns and weapons.”

But Tharit claimed the Foreign Ministry had received assurances from the Thai military, which has a tendency to act independently of the government in Thailand, that they would avoid a confrontation at all costs.

“ They confirmed that they said the first gunshot will not be from the Thai side, and if there is a first gunshot they will not immediately respond but investigate the source first,” said the Thai foreign ministry spokesman, who attended the Siem Reap meeting.

Source: The Nation