Uncertain attitudes towards Kampuchea

Press, 21 July 1980, Page 16

Uncertain attitudes towards Kampuchea

By

STUART McMILLAN

Mt ’ Andrew Peacock’s offer to resign as Australia’s Foreign Minister last week was after a series of interviews, the most substantial of which was conducted by Mr peter Hastings of the “Sydney Morning Herald,” printed, in dhat newspaper on July 14. To the casual observer Mr Peacock would not seem to have strayed too far from the straight apd narrow. He seemed to think that any long-term political settlement in Kampuchea had to take account of what Vietnam wanted and that any Government similar to Australia’s had to take account of what its people thought about foreign policy. In the case of Kampuchea he considered that many Australians did not like the recognition of the Pol Pot regime. But even these thoughts were enough. If Australia were considering withdrawing recognition from Pol Pot the countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations would be alarmed and New Zealand would be left on something of a limb. So Mr Peacock was asked to step back into line. Whether he offered to resign because he thought he had embarrassed the Gov-

emment or because he was convinced on personal grounds that he was right is not clear. Mr Fraser was reported to be upset by the comments and Mr Peacock appears to have faced criticism in the Cabinet. - As it is, unity has been restored. There stems almost no doubt now that when the vote for the seating of Kampuchea in the United Nations comes up in September there will be strong backing for the representatives of Pol Pot, in spite of the repugnance in which his regime is held, in Australia as Mr Peacock observed, and in most other places as well. The vote in the United Nations may not be as strong for Pol Pot this year as it was last year. India has decided to recognise the Heng Samrin regime installed by Vietnam. India’s vote may influence a number of others. It is the avoidance of the recognition of the Heng Samrin regime that A.S.E.A.N. wants. The five countries in that grouping — Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines — believe that such recognition would bestow on Vietnam a legality for its invasion.

New Zealand and Australia have both decided to support A.S.E.A.N. in its search for a political settlement and to take no action — withdrawing recognition from Pol Pot is the action everyone has in mind — without consulting A.S.E.A.N. Britain, although it supported Democratic Kampuchea, as the Pol Pot regime is called, when the U.N. vote came up last year, has since withdrawn recognition from the Pol Pot Government. Behind the technical squabble about which Government to recognise lie several other problems. One is the debate about how Vietnam should be treated. Inside A.S.E.A.N., Malaysia and Indonesia have sought to keep their lines of communication to Hanoi open. It was Malaysia which first proposed the idea of South-East Asia becoming a zone of “peace, freedom and neutrality.” Malaysia was determined that A.S.E.A.N. should never be seen as a military alliance confronting an Indo-China dominated by Vietnam.

The debate was continuing in spite of the invasion of Kampuchea by Vietnam. Then, on the eve of the A.S.E.A.N. Ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lum-

pur this month, Vietnameseled forces struck across the border into Thailand. The Thais had been repatriating Kampucheans which Vietnam believed included some who swelled the Pol Pot forces in Kampuchea. The incursion was a splendid opportunity for the “hawks” within A.S.E.A.N., Thailand and Singapore, to elicit solid and fierce support for their views from the other A.S.E.A.N. members.

When the Foreign Ministers of New Zealand and Australia .'.nd others took part in the post-A.S.E.A.N. meeting they were asked also to sign the declaration. Instead they gave support without committing themselves to the wording of the A.S.E.A.N. statement. While Malaysia had been seeking to keep its lines to Hanoi open, Thailand has been allowing the use of its territory for Chinese arms to be smuggled into Kampuchea for the Pol Pot forces. The intention of this policy was to “bleed” Vietnam —to make the war in Kampuchea so costly that Vietnam would be weakened and could not undertake any further ventures even if it wanted to. The United States, New Zealand, and from time to time Australia, thought this policy unwise. They argued that the longer the war lasted the greater would be the possibility that it would spread into Thailand. Australia appeared to blow hot and cold on the policy according to the number of refugees leaving Vietnam. When • the refugee flow stopped, Australia appeared to be closer to th: New Zealand and American view. There is another argument which has not surfaced pub-

licly so far. That is that after the Indo-China war and the establishment of Communist Governments in Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea, the other South-East Asian countries tried to read the lessons for themselves; One of the lessons some at least found was the attitude to borders and that fighting could spread to contiguous countries which were used as sanctuaries. That was how Kampuchea, then Cambodia, became involved in the Vietnara war in the first place. In their present enthusiasm for proving that Hanoi cannot be trusted and for maintaining a solid front in A.S.E.A.N., those- countries which once read the lessons of the Indo-China war so carefully appear not to be seeing the similarities between wha* is happening in Thailand now and. what happened in Kampuchea then. Sooner or later Malaysia and possibly Indonesia, and maybe even the Philippines, will start recapitulating the contiguous countries’ lesson. Then the unity of A.S.E.A.N. will be threatened. And the result will be far more telling than the good sense which Andrew Peacock frankly, if a little rashly and unprofessionally, expressed.