Archive for August 18, 2008
BANGKOK, Aug 18 (TNA, Agencies) — Only a few Thai and Cambodian troops remain near the disputed temple of Preah Vihear ahead of a meeting Tuesday of the two countries foreign ministers in Thailand’s Phetchburi province
southwest of Bangkok to seek a solution to a lingering border dispute over the ancient temple.
Thai Army chief General Anupong Paochinda is scheduled to inspect a Thai troop pullout from border points near the Preah Vihear temple in Thailand’s northeastern province of Si Sa Ket Monday morning.
Prior to departing for Si Sa Ket, Gen. Anupong reaffirmed the troop pullout which both countries have carried out since Saturday was the result of cooperation and understanding between Thailand and Cambodia to avoid confrontation and tension.
Cambodian Information Minister Khieu Kanharith confirmed Sunday that there were only 20 soldiers –10 Cambodian and 10 Thai — in the compound of a pagoda located in a border area claimed by both countries, according to the Associated Press.
In Phnom Penh, at least three people were slightly injured on Sunday when Cambodian anti-riot police cracked down on about 50 anti-Thai protesters, mainly teachers and garment workers during a demonstration over the disputed
Preah Vihear temple.
The demonstrators urged Thai troops to complete their withdrawal from the disputed temple.
Phnom Penh’s police chief G. Touch Naruth said such a protest would never help reduce the tension between the two countries, according to a report by Reuters.
Tensions at the ancient temple escalated after the United Nations for Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) early last month named the temple as World Heritage site to Cambodia. The International Court of Justice in 1962 ruled that the temple belongs to Cambodia, but that the surrounding area remains in dispute between the two countries.
The troop withdrawal followed the first meeting of Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag and his Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong held in the Cambodian province of Siem Reap on July 28. (TNA
August 18, 2008 at 7:16 am
PHNOM PENH, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) — Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong on Monday expressed optimism about the two-day talk with his Thai counterpart to ensure total military withdrawal from the border area to end the two countries’ month-long standoff there.
“I am optimistic about the bilateral talk with the Thai side to seek peaceful resolution to withdraw the troops totally from the Keo Sikha Kiri Svara Pagoda and the surrounding areas of the Preah Vihear Temple (in the eponymous Cambodian province),” he told reporters at the airport before leaving for the meeting set in HuaHin province in Thailand.
Currently, each sides only deployed 10 military people at the pagoda and 20 within the surrounding areas of the Preah Vihear Temple, said Hor Namhong, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, adding that this was the result from the previous foreign ministers’ meeting in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, on July 28.
“We want to withdraw all the troops from the areas near the Preah Vihear Temple, clear the mines there and finally plant border demarcation posts between the two countries,” he said.
In addition, for the Tamone Toch and Tamone Thom temples in neighboring Otdar Meanchey province of Cambodia, “we will discuss step by step to withdraw the troops there and end the problem in the near future,” he added.
During the trip, the foreign minister is also expected to visit Thai King to brief him on the current situation.
On July 15, Thai troops went into the border area to fetch three trespassers who had intended to claim Thai sovereignty over the Preah Vihear Temple. The troops stationed there ever since, thus triggering the military stalemate.
The same day, Thai troops occupied the Keo Sikha Kiri Svara Pagoda, which is situated on the only way leading to the Preah Vihear Temple.
In the following days, both sides gradually increased their military personnel to a thousand strong at the border area to show their determination for territorial sovereignty.
On July 28, foreign ministers from Cambodia and Thailand held a meeting in Siem Reap province and agreed to mull the possibility of evacuating troops from the border.
On Aug. 3, Thai troops entered the Tamone Toch and Tamone Thom temples, thus aggravating the standoff.
On Aug. 16, most of the troops at the Keo Sikha Kiri Svara Pagoda and within the surrounding areas of the Preah Vihear Templewere evacuated according to both sides’ agreement.
The Preah Vihear Temple straddles the Cambodian-Thai border atop the Dangrek Mountain and was listed as a World Heritage Site on July 7 by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee.
In 1962, the International Court of Justice decided that the 11-century temple and the land around belongs to Cambodia, which rankled the Thais and has led to continuous disputes.
August 18, 2008 at 7:01 am
Aug 18, 2008
DPA
Bangkok – Thai Prime Minister
Samak Sundaravej on Monday visited the Phreah Vihear complex on the eve of bilateral talks with Cambodia over the disputed border temple that sparked a military standoff between the two neighbouring countries last month.
‘Cambodia is our ASEAN neighbour that we must live together with, not be enemies with,’ Samak said while visiting the temple about 400 kilometres north-east of Bangkok.
Both Thailand and Cambodia are members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which also includes Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.
Over the weekend, both Thailand and Cambodia withdrew hundreds of troops from around Phreah Vihear, leaving 10 soldiers posted in the contested zone each.
Samak’s visit and the troop withdrawal came on the eve of talks on the disputed 11th-century temple site between Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag and his Cambodian counterpart, Hor Nam Hong, at the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin, 150 kilometres south-east of Bangkok.
The two foreign ministers last met July 28 to try to defuse the temple spat, which was then in danger of turning into a military conflict.
Separate claims on the area surrounding Preah Vihear turned into a military standoff between Thailand and Cambodia last month after UNESCO agreed to name the Hindu sanctuary a World Heritage Site.
Although Thailand has long accepted a 1962 ruling of the International Court of Justice that granted Cambodia sovereignty over the temple, which sits on a 525-metre cliff that defines the two countries’ common border, it has disputed Cambodia’s claim to the area surrounding the temple complex.
Many Thai historians and academics refute The Hague court’s ruling, claiming it was based on a faulty 1907 border map drawn up by the French, who were the colonial masters of Cambodia at the time.
The court ruled that since Thailand had not officially objected to the border demarcation placing the temple in Cambodia, it had forfeited the temple, but the court stopped short of ruling on the legitimacy of the French-drawn map’s borderline in Preah Vihear’s vicinity.
Thailand claims a 4.6-square-kilometre plot of land adjoining the temple is still disputed.
In fact, the 798-kilometre-long Thai-Cambodia border still has many disputed areas, with Preah Vihear being just the most controversial to date.
‘We think this issue is complex, and it will take a long time to solve,’ Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat said.
The Preah Vihear dispute has stoked nationalistic sentiments on both sides on the border.
About 200 police were deployed in Hua Hin to assure the safety of Hor Nam Hong, media reports said.
August 18, 2008 at 6:57 am
KUWAIT, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Kuwait signed more than $27 billion of investment agreements with nine Asian countries, including Brunei and the Philippines, during an Asian tour this month, its finance minister said in remarks published on Sunday.
The agreements were in the economic, oil, health and foreign affairs sectors, daily Awan cited Mustapha al-Shamali as saying.
“The value of the accords and economic and commercial protocols are more than $27 billion, with $3 billion to $4 billion of investments and possible commercial partnerships with each country,” Shamali said.
Shamali and Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah went on a tour of eight Asian countries this month to boost trade ties.
Kuwait would also “cooperate with South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, in the health sector”, Shamali said, without giving details.
Kuwait is talking with Asian countries, including Cambodia, about securing food supplies and investing in agriculture as the Gulf state looks to diversify its sources of food, the state news agency KUNA reported on Saturday. [ID:nLG655656]
A delegation including the Kuwait Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund, will visit Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar this month to look at investments in agriculture and industry, KUNA cited Shamali as saying on Saturday.
Kuwait wants to boost investments across asset classes in Asia with a focus on Japan, China and India, Shamali said last month.
August 18, 2008 at 4:29 am
PHNOM PENH, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) — Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni is scheduled to preside over the inauguration ceremony of the National Assembly on Sept. 24, local newspaper the Mekong Times reported Monday.
Senior Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) official Nguon Nhil said that the King’s chairmanship of the first session of the fourth National Assembly would “greatly honor” the legislative body.
Opposition officials agreed the King’s presence is imperative, particularly as the nation’s opposition has warned it may boycott the inauguration.
“The King’s presence always stabilizes (problematic) national situations, and citizens and political parties always respect and want the King to be here. The King’s presence is definitely important because he is a symbol of national peace and stability,” Kong Kom, Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) Deputy President, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
According to still preliminary results from the National Election Committee, the SRP won 26 of the 123 parliamentarian seats in the July 27 national election while the CPP gained 90 seats.
August 18, 2008 at 4:26 am
Bangkok Post – August 18, 2008
WASSANA NANUAM AND AP
The Joint Boundary Commission (JBC) meets today in a new bid to end the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia.
It comes after both sides agreed to reduce the number of troops on each side of the border.
The Suranaree Task Force and the Cambodian government confirmed yesterday that the number of Thai and Cambodian soldiers in the overlapping zone had been reduced in line with the agreement reached last Wednesday in Surin.
The two countries still had 10 soldiers each at the Keo Sikha Kiri Svara pagoda near Preah Vihear temple and 45 more around the pagoda’s compound for joint patrols, a source at the task force said.
The rest were spread out in the 4.6 square kilometres of land which had not been demarcated, the source said.
Thailand insists the area in dispute is in Kantharalak district in Si Sa Ket, while Cambodia argues that it is part of Preah Vihear province.
Both countries finished moving most of their troops from a nearby temple on Saturday, said the source.
Cambodian Information Minister Khieu Kanharith and Hang Soth, the director-general of the Preah Vihear National Authority, a Cambodian government agency managing the historic site, confirmed the troop pullout.
”The tension has eased considerably. There is no more confrontation,” Mr Hang Soth said, calling the troop withdrawals a ”good process giving us hope” about the new talks.
The reduction of troops came on the eve of the meeting between Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag and his Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong in Cha-am district of Phetchaburi.
The ministers will hold an informal meeting today followed by the official JBC meeting tomorrow.
The Foreign Ministry said Thailand’s main agenda is to find a way to establish sovereignty of the disputed area.
Second Army chief Lt-Gen Sujit Sitthiprapa will join other Thai negotiators in the talks.
Despite the reduction of troops, the source at the task force said the army was not satisfied as another Thai demand had not been met.
Thailand proposed at the Surin meeting that Cambodia replace 1,200 soldiers on top of the temple with police as a gesture of goodwill.
The presence of the Cambodian soldiers at the temple put Thailand at a strategic disadvantage.
On July 28, the nations’ foreign ministers agreed on a plan to withdraw their troops from the disputed area near the temple.
The stand-off started on July 15 after the World Heritage Committee approved Cambodia’s application to list the temple as a World Heritage site.
Both countries have long claimed the temple, but the World Court awarded it to Cambodia in 1962.
August 18, 2008 at 4:23 am
guardian.co.uk, UK – August 17, 2008
Hun Sen brought peace to Cambodia but he has sacrificed the poor on the altar of an economic boom
With yet another election victory in the bag, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, is now entering his thirty-fourth year in power. Hun Sen draws his inspiration not from south-east Asia’s more democratic leaders, but from Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who used dictatorial methods to build a modern, prosperous but tightly-controlled island city-state. Still only 57, Hun Sen has now served two years longer than Lee Kuan Yew – and even muses that he could still be premier at 90 if the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) keeps winning elections. It is this prospect, however fanciful, that alarms many educated Cambodians.
Trade unionists, opposition parties, and human rights workers have well-founded fears that this landslide election victory could lead to a clampdown on the right to protest and strike in Cambodia – human rights that were crushed long ago in Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew’s notorious Internal Security Act.
Hun Sen is the son of a poor farming family in Kompong Cham province, and a former Khmer Rouge officer who rebelled against Pol Pot, fled to Vietnam in 1977 and returned two years later as foreign minister, backed by the Vietnamese army. Still younger than any of his Asean counterparts, he now ranks as their most experienced prime minister. And he achieved all this despite losing an eye in the final battle to defeat the US-backed military regime of General Lon Nol back in 1975.
Only Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s rule in the 1960s can be compared with Hun Sen’s in terms of its strong leadership and its success in defining the politics and development of the country. Between these two eras, the nation was brought to the brink of extinction by the secret US bombing of Cambodia authored by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, which ultimately helped Pol Pot’s forces to seize power.
Now, after a period of survival in the 1980s – moulded in part by Vietnamese communism mixed with a revival of Cambodian culture – everything is changing. The free market reigns supreme. Land and property speculation is everything, heritage is for sale, and the US dollar is king. Land that was owned by poor farmers in the 1980s is now up for grabs – and indeed frequently is grabbed by a few tycoons linked to Hun Sen. The PM is generally regarded as part of a nouveau riche kleptocracy that siphons off foreign aid and ignores protests about human rights. But defenders of the CPP, and many of the people who have just voted for it, would point out that under his leadership the country is now at peace. Schools, roads and bridges have been built. The economy is booming, and the CPP has been justly rewarded. Few international observers seriously doubt that the democratic will swung behind the CPP, even allowing for unbalanced TV media coverage. (Unlike neighbouring countries, all Cambodia elections since 1993 have been monitored by international observers.)
In the 1980s Hun Sen – who was widely derided as a Vietnamese puppet at the time – had two priorities. The first was to stop the Khmer Rouge from returning to power (they were backed militarily by China and diplomatically by the west). The second was to rebuild a shattered nation.
The fragile government in Phnom Penh not only kept Pot’s forces at bay, but their Vietnamese backers speedily restored some basic services. After 1979 hospitals, schools, markets, Buddhist temples and cinemas – closed by the Khmer Rouge – were rapidly reopened by Hun Sen’s government. Hun Sen initiated peace talks with Cambodia’s exiled Prince Sihanouk, which eventually led to his return. He proved to be an inspirational leader, but much western reporting during the Cold War focused on the partisan belief that Cambodia was under foreign occupation. There was an abysmal failure to report the real story of a nation’s dramatic recovery, despite the UN’s cynical denial of aid to a desperately poor country.
I first met Hun Sen in 1981, and respect his achievements in helping to bring about the rebirth of his nation and ending the Khmer Rouge terror in the countryside. But from the point of view of public services and the treatment of the poor, his record since the 1993 elections leaves a great deal to be desired. His failure to build an equitable Cambodian society that all can share in, based on social and economic justice – not just a real estate boom – is lamentable.
It is strange that Hun Sen, who shares his humble beginnings with Brazil’s Lula and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, has no agenda for the poor, no instinct to curb the grotesque excesses of the ruling elite, and has made no attempt to protect the small farmers that he is descended from. For all his intelligence and political skills, Hun Sen’s success was based on survival, not a vision of the future. Bolstered by the recent discovery of offshore oil, the CPP has no development model other than the prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, which are easily grafted onto the corruption and get rich-quick mentality of his business cronies, military generals and his police chiefs.
If he had gracefully stepped down from power in 1998, after the final surrender of the Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen’s place in history would surely have been assured. Unless he changes tack, the dispossessed may have to resort to other means to achieve justice.
August 18, 2008 at 2:54 am
Viet Nam News – August 16, 2008
Phnom Penh — Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia have agreed to boost tourism development projects in 10 provinces in the three countries’ economic development triangle.
At a recent meeting in Phnom Penh, the tourism ministries of the three countries also agreed to conduct joint surveys on tourism development potential and foreign direct investment attraction capacities in the provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondolkiri and Stung Treng of Cambodia; Atopu, Sekong and Saravan of Laos; and Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Dac Lak and Dak Nong of Viet Nam.
The tripartite agreement also outlined that ministries would propose that their Governments approve projects related to immigration control and tourism infrastructure construction in those provinces.
The Cambodian tourism ministry would submit to its Government a project to build a road segment running from Krache Province to Viet Nam’s border areas via Mondolkiri Province.
A book of 148 pages introducing famous tourist sites at the border triangle of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia will also be published in the coming time, according to the agreement. — VNS
August 18, 2008 at 2:22 am
The Financial Times – By Raphael Minder in Hong Kong
Published: August 17 2008 22:50 | Last updated: August 17 2008 22:50
Royal Group, a Cambodian conglomerate whose interests range from banking to mobile telephony, is raising $2bn from private investors, together with Hong Kong-based Millennium Group, to develop Koh Rong, an island off Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s only deep-water port.
The move comes as property developers are planning billion-dollar investments to transform Cambodia’s coastline into one of Asia’s leading holiday destinations.
Such investments are designed to help diversify a Cambodian tourism industry that is heavily reliant on Angkor Wat and the country’s other inland historic treasures.
The amount planned by Royal will only cover the initial stages of the development, according to Mark Hanna, chief financial officer of Royal Group.
“We are talking about an island that is the same size as Hong Kong island, where we want to add things such as an airport, so ultimately we are certainly looking at several billions,” he told the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, MPDI, a subsidiary of Seng Enterprise, a family-owned group that is one of Cambodia’s leading construction companies, is working on another $2bn project, with unnamed US, Japanese and Middle Eastern investors. The project will triple the size of Kep, a neglected former French colonial resort
Seng’s plan involves reclaiming land along a 6km stretch of coastline and building luxury towers and bungalows. that will be able to house about 10,000 families.
They also include Preah Vihear, another temple that straddles the border with Thailand and whose disputed ownership has threatened to spark a military conflict between the two countries.
After decades of war and genocide overseen by the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia is playing catch-up to other south-east Asian tourism hotspots in countries such as Thailand and Malaysia.
In the 15 years since Cambodia’s return to multiparty democracy, the country has made an impressive economic recovery and tourism has grown almost tenfold to become the second most important sector after textiles. The number of visitors to Cambodia breached 2m for the first time last year, but of those only 122,000 visited the country’s beaches.
Vantha Seng, chief financial officer of Seng Enterprise, said construction in Kep was likely to start next year, thanks to a first round of financing of about $250m, with contributions from “well-known” Japanese, American and Middle Eastern funds and private equity firms.
She said the project could become Cambodia’s first offshore listing, either on the Hong Kong or Korean stock exchange. As to the targeted clientele, the developers are betting particularly on wealthy Asian pensioners from Singapore, South Korea and Japan. Some of the housing will also be reserved for Cambodians.
“We already have some bookings and it’s mainly from people under 50 who are preparing their retirement plans,” she said. “Thailand has shown how you can develop beautiful beaches but we also want to avoid some of the mistakes there and certainly want to remain upmarket.”
August 18, 2008 at 2:18 am
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