ASEAN to seek French and RI help in Cambodia
ASEAN to seek French and RI help in Cambodia
BANGKOK (Agencies): The Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) is to ask France and Indonesia for help in defusing
Cambodia's political crisis, a Thai Foreign Ministry official
said yesterday.
France and Indonesia both played major roles in pushing
Cambodia's warring factions toward the 1991 Paris peace accord
that officially ended the Cambodian civil war.
The decision to seek the two countries' help came during an
informal meeting of foreign ministers from the seven-member ASEAN
during this week's handover of Hong Kong to China, the official
said.
"The ministers discussed how they could lessen the on-going
political tension in Cambodia," said the official, who declined
to be identified.
"This led to the suggestion that France and Indonesia, who co-
chaired the Paris peace effort, should step in to examine the
political situation in Cambodia and find ways to promote
political stability," said the official.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are due to become full ASEAN
members later this month. The group currently groups Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam.
Political tension has been high in Cambodia over a long-
running power struggle between the country's two prime ministers
who head a deadlocked coalition government.
Their feud has been inflamed in recent weeks with the
unraveling of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla force.
First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh hopes to strike
a political deal with a rebel faction that broke with supreme
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot last month.
But powerful Second Prime Minister Hun Sen has been trying to
block any deal between his rival and the breakaway Khmer Rouge
faction.
The ASEAN move is the latest international effort to try to
defuse the situation in Cambodia.
Tension
Meanwhile in Cambodia, a convoy of bodyguards detailed to
Cambodia's First Prime Minister Ranariddh was stopped and
searched yesterday by forces loyal to Hun Sen resulting in a two-
hour standoff, witnesses said.
Military police affiliated with Hun Sen's Cambodian People's
Party backed by two armored personnel carriers forcibly stopped
about 100 of the prince's heavily-armed bodyguards at a
checkpoint at the border of east-central Kampong Cham province,
they said.
The bodyguards were asked to surrender their weapons which the
military police at the checkpoint deemed to be "illegal," the
witnesses said, adding that after about two hours the guards were
seen passing through the checkpoint without their weapons --
assault rifles and B-40 rockets.
It was not immediately clear whether the weapons had been
officially confiscated.
More than 100 military police had taken up positions around
the checkpoint which lies on National Route Six on the border
between the provinces of Kampong Cham and Kandal about 35
kilometers north of Phnom Penh.
"The soldiers were ready to attack," said one motorist who
passed the checkpoint.
The standoff occurred as the convoy was returning to the
capital from a school inauguration in Kampong Cham, Hun Sen's
home province. Prince Ranariddh himself traveled by helicopter
and was not affected.
"We don't have casualty results but there is still a detour on
Route Five and people are still quite nervous," said an official
with an aid agency that works in the affected area about 20 to 30
kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh.
A senior defense ministry official said he could not confirm
any casualties until a full report on the fighting was presented
later yesterday evening.