President Tran cancels visit to Cambodia
President Tran cancels visit to Cambodia
PHNOM PENH (Agencies): Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong has unexpectedly canceled a two-day trip to Cambodia due to begin after the weekend, a senior Cambodian official said on Friday.
"I have been told that (President Tran Duc Luong) has postponed his trip to Cambodia due to health reasons," government spokesman Khieu Kanharith told Reuters.
Vietnamese embassy spokesman Chu Dong Loc said he was unable to confirm the trip, which had been scheduled to start on Monday, had been canceled. "I cannot confirm yet. There will be an announcement from the Cambodian foreign affairs ministry," he said.
He declined to comment on Luong's health. The Vietnamese president last week hosted a historic visit to communist Vietnam by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
An official at the foreign affairs ministry in Phnom Penh said he also had heard that Tran Duc Luong's trip had been canceled, but had not received confirmation from the Vietnamese.
"The visit is 100 percent postponed," said Om Yentieng, personal adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen. "It is not a good time for a visit because we are continuing our operation to find the rest of the terrorists."
The cancellation follows a bloody shootout in Phnom Penh earlier on Friday, during which eight men were killed, seven police and more than a dozen civilians injured, and more than 50 people arrested.
A heavily armed gang of 40 to 50 men attacked a police station in the Cambodian capital at about 1.00 a.m. (1 a.m. Friday) Thursday) before moving toward the ministry of defense about 800 metres away.
Leaders of the gang were suspected to be associated with one or more anti-government and anti-communist militia groups operating from within and outside of Cambodia, including the Cambodian Freedom Fighters and the Free Khmer and Free Vietnam movements.
Deputy Phnom Penh Police Commissioner Muong Khim said the attackers belonged to a group known as the Cambodian Freedom Fighters.
The Cambodian Freedom Fighters -- like the better-known Free Khmer movement -- are anti-communist rebels who claim the government is a Vietnamese puppet regime. They were originally formed in the 1950s with the backing of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1979, drove out the Khmer Rouge regime and installed a new government.
The nationalist movement, led by Cambodian exiles living in the United States and believe to train along the Thai border, is virulently opposed to Vietnamese influence in Cambodia and regards Hun Sen's government as a puppet of Hanoi.
Hun Sen first came to power in the 1980s when he was installed by occupying Vietnamese troops.
The Vietnamese army liberated Cambodia from the hated Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, but its 10-year occupation bred resentment among many and fueled at least three nationalist resistance movements.
In a related development, on Friday, Hanoi demanded "serious" action against a veteran anti-communist who showered the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City with anti-government leaflets just hours before U.S. President Bill Clinton's historic visit to Vietnam.
Former south Vietnamese fighter pilot Ly Tong was an "international terrorist" whose violation of Vietnamese airspace in a hijacked Thai aircraft last Friday was an "especially serious" incident, the foreign ministry said.
The Thai authorities, who detained Tong as soon as he landed back in Thailand, should take all appropriate measures so that he could be prosecuted under Vietnamese law, ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in a statement carried by the official media.