Thai Troops To Go To Cambodia

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32312, 2 June 1970, Page 16

Thai Troops To Go To Cambodia

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copy right)

BANGKOK, June 1.

Thailand will send volunteer troops to Cambodia, the Prime Minister (Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn) announced today.

Thailand would send the volunteers to the defence of Phnom Penh and other Cambodian centres to allow Cambodian troops to be deployed elsewhere against Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops, he said. The volunteers would be trained only in battalion size,

because the Thai Army did not have facilities for training at regimental or divi-l sional level. The training period was expected to last eight iveeks. Field-Marshal Thanom said that the Thai Government would call for the volunteers: as soon as possible from {among Thai Army reservists 'and Thai citizens of Cambodian origin. The Thai Prime Minister said that the volunteers would have to be equipped; armed and paid for by Cambodia, unlike the 12,000 Thai combat troops now in South Vietnam, who were equipped and financed by the Thai Government.

He emphasised that Thailand was raising the volunteer force at the request of the Cambodian Government, but added: “It is better for Thailand to fight the enemy away from home rather than to wait for him to arrive at one’s door.” The volunteers would serve in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and the provincial capitals of Seam Reap, Battambang and Kompong {Cham, thus releasing Cambodian troops to fight- the enemy in other areas. Field Marshal Thanom said that Thailand has also agreed to train Cambodians as noncommissioned officers for the Cambodian armed forces. They would be trained in Thailand and would return to Cambodia as the “backbone” of the Cambodian forces. The Prime Minister conceded that there was some opposition to sending troops

into Cambodia, hut he said the majority of Thais were in favour of the move.