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.