Cambodian P.M. Seeks U.K. And Soviet Help

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32253, 23 March 1970, Page 17

Cambodian P.M. Seeks U.K. And Soviet Help

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

SAIGON, March 22.

The Cambodian Prime Minister (General Lon Nol) asked Britain and the Soviet Union today to use the 1954 Geneva Accords to get North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops out of Cambodia, the Associated Press reported.

At the same time he said the new “Government of salvation” in Phnom Penh would begin negotiations with the Communists to withdraw their forces from the country.

In a brief statement in French on Phnom Penh radio, the retired general said that the Cambodian people had rejected the idea of having foreign troops occupy their soil and serve as master under “a pretext of solidarity.” To carry out the people’s wishes, General Nol said, he was appealing to Britain and the Russians, as co-chairman of the 14-nation Geneva Convention, to invoke the powers of the International Control Commission “to put an end by peaceful means to the violation of national territory.”

“I take this occasion to ask the co-chainnan of the 1954 Geneva Conference to kindly inform as rapidly as possible the others (signatories) involved in this affair of the

serious situation as it affects the future of (Cambodian) territory by (sic) Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops,” he said. “At the same time, the Government of salvation will enter into negotiations with Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on the pullout of their troops.”

General Nol said that a vice-Foreign Minister would take up the Geneva Accords matter with the British and Soviet embassies in Phnom Penh.

Meanwhile, N.Z.P.A.-Reuter reported from Hong Kong that the ousted Cambodian leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, had pledged to help topple his country’s new leadership—but from the sidelines, the New China News Agency reported today. The 47-year-old prince was quoted by the agency as saying in a statement issued in Peking yesterday that he had renounced the title of Head of State and had absolutely no intention of seeking a rei turn to power.

But what he called the reactionary clique of the extreme Right that deposed him in a coup d’etat in Phnom Penh last Wednesday would itself be overthrown by new leaders in the near future, he said.

The new Cambodian leadership had abandoned the country’s independence “in the interests of the American imperialists” the prince said. A struggle must be waged from within and outside Cambodia to obliterate the coup d’etat and restore legality and democracy there, he said. The prince, who was on his way to Peking for talks with Chinese leaders, when he was overthrown was announced, said that he would formally tender his resignation as Head of State—which he called, “a now absurb title”—to the Cambodian people in the near future, but he gave no date. He called on his colleagues in the old regime to make way for those “who naturally deserve the honour of taking upon themselves alone the destiny of the motherland in the community of progressive nations.”