Super-Powers push for end to Kampuchea conflict

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 11

Super-Powers push for end to Kampuchea conflict

NZPA-Reuter Paris The United States, the Soviet Union and China will bring their diplomatic weight to bear this weekend to try to end the fighting in Kampuchea, while the four factions involved in the conflict seem as far from peace as ever. Foreign Ministers of the three Powers will join the factions at a 20-nation conference in Paris after days of inconclusive talks between the Kampuchean Prime Minister, Hun Sen, and the three resistance groups. The four parties took until yesterday even to agree on who should sit where at the international conference. The Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, before leaving for Paris, sounded an optimistic note when he said international co-operation could help resolve the conflict. “One of the important tasks facing the conference is to create effective international monitoring and verification machinery,” he said.

The presence of Mr Shevardnadze, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, and United States Secretary of State, James Baker, adds crucial weight to the conference, as they are the main powerbrokers behind the decade-old conflict. The Soviet Union’s ally, Vietnam, invaded Kampuchea in 1978, ousting the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge, whose guerrillas have been battling ever since, as have two West-ern-backed groups, to throw out the invaders. Talks in Paris this week between Kampuchea’s Hun Sen and the three resistance groups bared bitter rivalries that promise to make a peace settlement very hard to achieve. Peace talks in a Paris suburb broke down quickly, leaving the four groups squabbling over how Kampuchea should be represented at the same conference centre where the United States and North Vietnam tried to end their own bitter war in the 19705. After hours of Frenchsponsored negotiations,

the four agreed all to sit behind the name Kampuchea at the conference. Also attending the conference will be France and Britain, whose new Foreign Secretary, John Major, will be making his first appearance abroad since being appointed earlier this week. The six countries of the Association of South East Asia Nations, and Japan, will also be represented. Western diplomats say the super-Powers, which arm different factions, could play a major part in ending the conflict, but it will be difficult to prevent some kind of new civil war. Vietnam has pledged to withdraw the last 50,000 of its troops from Kampuchea by September. Resistance factions are believed to be preparing to move in to Kampuchea to grab a slice of territory even as they discuss peace. Much will depend at the conference on the enigmatic Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the deposed monarch of Kampuchea, who leads one of the resistance groups.