Aust, 'deep concern’

Press, 12 March 1985, Page 10

Aust, 'deep concern’

NZPA-AAP Singapore The Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Bill Hayden, has asked his ambassador in Vietnam, Mr Richard Broinowski, to express Australia’s “deep concern” about Vietnamese armed incursions into Thai territory. He had asked the ambassador to take the action after evidence presented by the Thai Foreign Minister, Air Chief Marshal Siddhi Savetsila, in Bangkok on Sunday that about 3000 Vietnamese soldiers had deliberately crossed into Thai territory to try to isolate the last remaining guerrilla stronghold in the border area.

“Last night we sent a cable to Hanoi, to our ambassador there, asking him to call on Mr Thach, the Vietnamese Foreign Minister, outlining my very deep concern, and of course condemnation of the military action of the Vietnamese on Thai territory and to discuss the matter with him,” Mr Hayden said. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City last week Mr Nguyen Co Thach and the Viet-

namese Prime Minister, Mr Pham Van Dong, denied that there had been any incursion into Thai territory. Air Marshal Siddhi showed Mr Hayden a news video of a captured Vietnamese soldier, along with bodies of Vietnamese troops and captured weapons and other material. Mr Hayden said later that on the basis of the evidence presented to him it appeared that what the Vietnamese had told him was “incorrect.” The Vietnamese action was a serious set-back to attempts to find a political solution to the Kampuchean problem. Air Marshal Siddhi had told him that Thailand would not respond to or even look at any new Vietnamese proposals in the light of the incursion.

© Kampuchean guerrillas had begun retreating from their stronghold at Green Hill yesterday after a seven-day Vietnamese infantry and artillery siege, diplomats and Thai military sources said. Prince Norodom Sihanouk gave the order to withdraw all of Green Hill’s estimated 3000 defenders — members

of the National Sihanoukian Army — by nightfall, the sources said. Sihanouk sources in Bangkok could not confirm this but said Vietnamese forces had launched their most intensive artillery barrage since the attack on the stronghold just inside Kampuchea started eight days ago.

Diplomats said the shelling on both sides of the Thai-Kampuchean border was so intensive that guerrillas may have trouble getting out of the camp. But Thai officers said guerrilla escape routes into Thailand remained clear. More Thai reinforcements were rushed to the area as Thai and Vietnamese artillery exchanged heavy fire. Thai military sources said they expected Hanoi’s forces to occupy Green Hill, also called Tatum. They saw no quick end to the Vietnamese incursion into Thailand. That is because Vietnamese control of. nearby Thai Hill 424 is critical to the occupation of the guerrilla headquarters, according to an authoritative Thai military source.