Accord eludes peace talks

Press, 31 August 1989, Page 8

Accord eludes peace talks

NZPA-Reuter Paris The Cambodian peace conference < will end today without an accord, < foiled by the apparent determination of the country’s factions to fight < to the death and foreign reluctance i to stop supporting them. J ‘‘They’ve been fighting for 500 i years. They’re going to go on 1 fighting,” one Western delegate at 1 the talks said. The 19-nation Paris conference < aimed to produce a peace settle- I ment between Cambodia’s pro- < Vietnamese government and its i three guerrilla opponents before a September 26 deadline set by Hanoi j to pull out its troops. ' But a spokesman for the month- 1 long conference said on Tuesday it would produce only a “fairly brief” : communique. '

“It will probably be the shortest document in the history of French diplomacy,” one delegate said. The conference spokesman, Jean Gueginou, said that, in spite of lastminute mediation with the government of the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, and the resistance factions opposing him, no progress had been made. He told reporters the talks foundered on five problems, particularly the two key issues of power-sharing and setting up an international mechanism to monitor peace. “There was not, at this stage, the possibility of movement on the part of any of the Cambodian factions,” Mr Gueginou said. Vietnam and the Soviet Union arm the Cambodian government. The guerrillas are supplied by

China,'Thailand, the United States, France, Singapore and Britain. “The foreign sponsors have their own competing interests and want to continue the conflict,” said a Bangkok-based diplomat. Mr Gueginou said the talks would resume in Paris when the time was ripe, perhaps next spring, but some delegates were sceptical. Diplomats said the failure of the conference would lead to more intense fighting in Cambodia, where the resistance, dominated by powerful Khmer Rouge guerrillas, have been at war for 10 years with Vietnamese troops. The Vietnamese invaded the country in December, 1978, sweeping away four years of Khmer Rouge rule in which more than a million people died.