Hanoi defines pact key

Press, 11 March 1985, Page 10

Hanoi defines pact key

NZPA-Reuter Bangkok The Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Bill Hayden, said yesterday he received “concrete” clarifications from Hanoi and its Phnom Penh ally, which could lead to a settlement of the sixyear Kampuchean conflict. “We have received concrete information on the critical issues.ln my estimation this is the most important development to take place in relation to the Kampuchean border situation to this point,” he said in Bangkok after his peace mission to Vietnam. Mr Hayden will meet the Thai Foreign Minister, Air Chief Marshal Siddhi Savetsila, to brief him on his talks with Vietnamese leaders and his unscheduled meeting in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday with the Kampuchean Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mr Hun Sen. Vietnam’s demand for the elimination of the Pol Potled Khmer Rouge guerrillas has been the main stumbling block to peaceful negotiations.

Mr Hayden said Vietnamese leaders had explained to him that elimination did not mean liquidation. Hanoi wanted Pol Pot and his top aide, leng Sary, retired and their followers disarmed, he said. He had been assured there would be no reprisals against those who laid down their arms. The Peking-backed Khmer Rouge is the dominant force in the threefaction, United Nations-re-cognised Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which is fighting to' oust the Vietnamese from Kampuchea. The Association of SouthEast Asian Nations, staunch supporters of the coalition, has repeatedly demanded the unconditional withdrawal of Hanoi’s forces. It believes the Kampuchean people should decide the issue of the Khmer Rouge, blamed for the deaths of possibly millions of Kampucheans before it was deposed by Vietnamese troops in January, 1979. Mr Hayden said that Hanoi and Phnom Penh

agreed on the need to establish peace and security in South-East Asia but maintained that Kampuchea alone could not be expected to be neutral. On self-determination, Mr Hayden said, there would be only one political party, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, under an electoral process envisaged by Hanoi and Phnom Penh. Other candidates could stand as independents. Mr Hayden said that Hanoi and Phnom Penh had left the door open for some sort of accommodation with Son Sann, head of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, and Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the leader of the coalition. But that was not an openended invitation. “The metaphor used was that traditionally in Kampuchea peasants work together to prepare and cook the rice. When the rice is cooked only those who worked together are entitled to eat it,” he said.' • At Aranyaprathet, Thailand, Kampuchean resistance guerrillas said yes-

terday they had seized the initiative and repulsed some of the 3000 to 4000 Vietnamese troops launching a multi-pronged assault on the last main Kampuchean resistance near the Thai border. Thai military sources reported that Vietnamese ground forces backed by artillery fire today struck a camp of another guerrilla group in a four-month-old see-saw battle for its control. Khmer Rouge guerrillas to the south late on Saturday had struck Vietnamese forces occupying their fallen bases, prompting retaliatory fire from Hanoi’s artillery and mortars, they said. Hanoi’s offensive has toppled all main resistance bases but for Tatum, Prince Sihanouk’s headquarters 122 km north of Aranyaprathet. Truong Mealy, Prince Sihanouk’s. spokesman in Bangkok, said that Tatum’s defenders had killed 800 Vietnamese soldiers and wounded more than 1000 others since Hanoi’s assault began on Tuesday.