International Enemies bicker at talks, armies clash

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 9

International

Enemies bicker at talks, armies clash

NZPA-Reuter Paris Enemies in the drawn-out war over Cambodia have traded inconclusive arguments over a negotiating table in Paris as their respective armies reported clashes at the warfront.

The first day of a 19nation peace conference brought a restatement of long-held positions that left diplomats doubting whether a breakthrough could be achieved.

Delegates bickered over basic issues including whether the Khmer Rouge, blamed for the gruesome deaths of a million Cambodians, should be included in a future government and whether the United Nations should have a peacemaking role. The Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, told reporters: “There have been some confrontational statements and that’s negative. This is supposed to be a peace conference.”

In military bulletins from the region, the resis-

tance accused “Vietnamese aggressor troops” of firing heavy shells and thousands of rockets onto Thai territory, killing Thais and Cambodian refugees. In a rival communique the Cambodian army reported carrying out 22 sweeps and killing 36 guerrillas. After the first bruising day of speeches, the old adversaries China and Vietnam join in the arguments today. Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge is also due to speak. Ten years after invading Vietnamese forces kicked it out of Cambodia, the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge won the reluctant endorsement of the United States Secretary of State, James

Baker. He said Washington would go along with giving the Khmer Rouge a role in a future government provided Pol Pot and other notorious leaders never got back into power. Mr Baker warned that the bigger the Khmer Rouge role, the less American support a new government would get. The resistance coalition leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, maintains a role by his Khmer Rouge ally is essential to reconciliation. The Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, retorted: “You must not make the Cambodian people hostages of the Khmer Rouge by forcing them to accept their re-

turn to power.” Prince Sihanouk told the gathering of Foreign Ministers that even if Vietnamese troops backing the Cambodian Government of Hun Sen withdrew as scheduled in September, his resistance movement would fight on unless the United Nations was allowed to keep the peace and the existing Government was dissolved. Mr Shevardnadze, assailing Western insistence on United Nations monitoring of Vietnam’s pull- 1 out and a ceasefire, said the United Nations had not proved itself capable of controlling the peace accord in Afghanistan.

One diplomat called the opening session “very robust.”