Kampucheans given Peking arms assurance

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 9

Kampucheans given Peking arms assurance

NZPA Peking Son Sann, of the antiVietnamese coalition in Kampuchea, has apparently received assurances from Chinese leaders of continued military aid to the coalition’s three guerrilla factions. He told a news conference after a meeting with the Chinese Communist Party general secretary,. Mr Hu Yaobang: “I can tell you that the Chinese Government will accord us various kinds of aid, humanitarian and otherwise.”

The aid would not be given all at once but gradually, according to their combat needs.

Mr Sann, one of the coalition’s three leaders, said that he had asked for aid not just for his own faction, the nonCommunist Khmer Peoples’ National Liberation Front, but also for his pro-Peking Communist partners, the Khmer Rouge, and the much smaller forces of the former Head of State, Price Norodom Sihanouk. “I have asked for what is necessary to struggle against a very strong army, who has new arms, new tanks and even toxic gas,” he said, repeating allegations that the Vietnamese were using chemical weapons against resistance forces in Kampuchea.

Asked how the aid would be shared among the coalition partners and whether the Khmer Rouge would, as usual, get the most part, he repled: “Aid will certainly reach the three parties ...” But he said that it would. be better if the Chinese allocated a definite share to each group rather than handing it all to the coalition itself to distribute. The resistance forces, ostensibly united in June, remain an uneasy alliance of

politically hostile groups which have previously fought each other at various times.

Official Chinese reports of the meeting quoted Mr Hu as calling on the three factions to “Discard their differences with each other and unite to resist the foreign aggressors.”

Peking radio quoted Mr Sann as saying that he would do his best to keep the alliance together. But at his news conference he emphasised each group’s right to freedom of action.

Although Mr Sann declined to say whether the Chinese had promised military aid to his own guerrillas, sources close to his delegation said that Mr Hu had given him a loose assurance that this would be forthcoming when he needed it. Mr Sann said that the Vietnamese had recently begun to mass troops near K.P.N.L.F. bases, apparently preparing for a major dry season offensive. The sources said that Mr Sann’s front was concerned that Hanoi might concentrate its offensive against the smaller non-Communist forces in an attempt to wipe them out. This would leave the resistance dominated by the Khmer Rouge, whose tarnished international image under Pol Pot gave the Vietnamese a better pretext to be in Kampuchea.

Mr Sann said he had 14,000 men under his command, although not all of them under arms. Asked about the role of the former Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, he said he apparently still played a main role in that faction.

Mr Sann said that Mr Hu had suggested that his liberation front should request concrete aid from other friendly countries, apparently Western nations.