ASEAN turns its back on Cambodia's new leader

ASEAN turns its back on Cambodia's new leader

By Karl Grobe

FRANKFURT AM MAIN (DPA): The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has delayed Cambodia's membership indefinitely. The German government has also put its development aid program on hold.

While the new internationally unrecognized head of government, Hun Sen, held his first cabinet meeting on Thursday, fighting was taking place near the north western city of Siem Reap.

The leading member of the opposition, Sam Rainsy welcomed the ASEAN decision which was taken at an emergency meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

Rainsy, who is in Germany, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper that "ASEAN and the international community had no recognized figure in Cambodia to whom they could express their concern during these difficult times."

Rainsy dismissed the new Hun Sen government, which is only represented by the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) -- the successor to the organization imposed by Vietnam in 1980 -- as illegal. The opposition politician called the breach of the coalition by Hun Sen a "coup d'etat, slap in the face of the UN and a return to the conditions of the civil war in 1993."

According to his information, Phnom Penh was in the grip of "angst, terror, violence and plunderers." However, he categorically ruled out any prospect of an alliance between the deposed First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh and the Khmer Rouge in order to resist Hun Sen. Instead he stressed the need for democratic forces to unite in their opposition to Hun Sen.

Rainsy was the finance minister in Ranariddh's government until leaving both office and the FUNCINPEC Party in 1995. Recently he had started working with the government despite remaining in opposition himself. The so-called NUF alliance with the Funcinpec Party had a "solid foundation based on common ground," says Rainsy.

He describes Hun Sen's dissolution of the coalition as a "coup d'etat designed to prevent next year's democratic elections" As the People's Party couldn't have won the elections, "Now they will postpone or rig the elections to maintain power," says Rainsy.

In Phnom Penh meanwhile, news agencies report that Hun Sen's rump cabinet is meeting. The agency denied that a coup had taken place, pointing out that the monarch had not been deposed.

Ranariddh, who is at the UN in New York, is free to return to Cambodia but would have to face a court. The Thai government has refused to allow him a military base on their territory.

Fighting was reported on Thursday between the Thai border and Siem Reap, near the temple city of Angkor.

The German government's decision to withhold development cooperation was announced in Bonn on Thursday by Carl-Dieter Spranger, the minister responsible. Work on all projects will be stopped, as will the transfer of funding.