PRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1989. Higher for Cambodia

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 12

PRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1989. Higher for Cambodia

The international conference being held in Patis-totry to settle the future of Cambodia hail- gfeat 1 importance.' It did not startoutthatwayahd the conference seems to have about simply because France announced that it was going to be held. In fact $ the • ; announcement caught the Association of South-East Asian Nations, all closely interested in the future of Cambodia, somewhat by surprise. France is clearly seeking a high profile internationally and sees the conference as contributing to this end., ' /Whatever its origins, the conference has already had the effect of bringing together the American Secretary of State, Mr Baker, and .the 1 Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Shevardnadze, for a three-hour talk. They have reached isome measure of agreement. Vietnam has also announced that it will have withdrawn all its droops from Cambodia by September.; 27. These are momentous developments for.the future of Cambodia and have already given the Paris conference a great significance?/ 1 J/ITie' 'challenge facing the Paris conference is immense and it is complicated. The central issue is what will happen in Cambodia after" the Vietnamese withdraw. One outcome may be that Cambodia will be plunged into civil war. This would mean the fearful possibility that the Khmer Rouge will triumph in armed struggle and return to powen The Khmer * Rouge is the murderous group which ran Cambodia from 1975 until 1979,'killingperhaps a million people in that period. Mr Baker and Mr Shevardnadze have agreed/on ’the. principle that the Khmer Rouge should not be allowed to regain power; is a good beginning. yfibw/io prevent just that happening will tax the^ingenuity ofthe,negotiators in Paris. The Khmer Rouge are powerful militarily, theimost powerful ©! I ,the three main groups of .present opposing the Government in the capitatnPhnom /Perih.; they can command perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 troops, compared with about 18,000 under the command of the former Cambodian ruler, Prince Sihanouk, and 12,000 or so under the command of Mr Son Sann. China has armed the Khmer Rouge and Thailand has permitted the Chinese arms to pass over its territory. It is unlikely that the guerrilla groups would allow themselves to be disarmed; and they have good reason not to.

If they were disarmed, the Vietnambacked Government led by Mr Hun Sen, the country’s present Prime Minister, would be in a position to impose its will on the country even without the support it now gets from Vietnam. The groups also fear one another. Moreover, although the Vietnamese withdrawal now seems certain, Vietnam has said before that it would withdraw troops and has not done so. The guerrilla groups will want to see the Vietnamese well and truly gone, not, as many suspect, just officially gone and, in reality, having left thousands of soldiers in the Phnom Penh forces. A.S.E.A.N. fears that Cambodia will end up the way Afghanistan has gone. There, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops and the opposing forces within the country are continuing to fight. The external intervention

came to an end, as everyone wanted it to end; .but this did not bring peace to Afghanistan. A solution of this kind would be appallingly disruptive in South-East Asia. A.S.E:A.N.’s fears have been raised:, by the unwillingness of Vietnam and the; Hun Sen Government to allow the withdrawal to be supervised by a United Nations Iforce. Suspicion of Vietnam is deeply ingrained in most of the countries in A.S.E.A.N. and they incline to the belief that Vietnam wants chaos after it has taken its troops away. If the objections of the Hun Sen Government and the Soviet Union to a United Nations peace-keeping force are overcome, New Zealand may have a part to play. The New Zealand Government has expressed its willingness to participate in a peace-keeping force in Cambodia. A.S.E.A.N. seems to regard a New Zealand role favourably. The present Government has given considerable emphasis to peace-keeping in its thinking; and, in South-East Asia, no more human<e task presents itself than preventing the return of the Khmer Rouge to the domination of Cambodia. &

The Soviet Union is arguing that the United Nations has not been able to keep the? peace in Afghanistan; but the manner of the| withdrawal from Afghanistan and thereligious rivals and political rivals in Afghanistan made the settling down of that country extraordinarily difficult. Political and ideological rivalries also divide the groups in Cambodia, which makes it all the more important to get the withdrawal and the change to Cambodian rule right. The answer is to avoid repeating the mistakes madein Afghanistan, not : to reject . the notion: of supervised withdrawal and change to a new Government.

So how can the political difficulties of a Cambodia without a strong Vietnamese troop presence be resolved? The A.S.E.A.N. countries, ’ the Son Sann group, and the Sihanouk group believe that there will have to be a four-party coalition comprising the Sihanoukists, the Son Sann people, the Vietnam-backed Hun Sen Government people, and the Khmer Rouge as well until elections are held. To many Westerners, and to Vietnam and the Hun Sen Government, the participation of the Khmer Rouge in a new Government is unacceptable. The crimes they committed were in some ways as gross as those committed by the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge have surely destroyed any right to take part in any Government. A better solution would be to stop their supply of arms from China through Thailand. This would mean striking a dear with China. Since China’s brutal suppression of demonstrating; students? dealings . with the Peking Government may be difficult because international relationships with China have soured. Both options are distasteful, but the one which entails persuading Chipa/to stop the arming of the Khmer Rouge isrplaiiily the more honourable. Depriving the Khmer Rouge of arms supplies would not immediately ft. disabletheir forces. Nevertheless, jit would isolate the Khmer Rouge and deprive them of moral support. It would enable ?a concentrated international effort to restore peace to Cambodia.