Thailand cedes ancient temple

Mark Dodd, Bangkok | June 23, 2008

Courtesy of The Australian

THAILAND is moving to accept a new map that will uphold Cambodia's World Heritage claim on the ancient 10th century Khmer temple that straddles the countries' common border - a long-contested site and former Khmer Rouge sanctuary that almost brought the two claimant nations to war in the 1960s.

While the Thai army has expressed reservations about the Cambodian map, the Bangkok Government has given qualified endorsement for the new chart, although Foreign Minister Noppadon Patama denied any territory would be ceded to Cambodia.

If approved, the temple with a bloody recent history - which is called Preah Vihear in Cambodia and Khao-Phra Viharn in Thailand - would begin the first step of UN-backed World Heritage listing.

Thailand's National Security Council endorsed the Cambodian map of the site last week, although the army had earlier expressed concerns it would cede territory to Phnom Penh.

The sprawling temple ruins sit atop the rugged Dangrek escarpment and are accessible only from Thailand's northeastern Si Sa Ket province.

After years of acrimonious haggling, the International Court of Justice awarded possession of the temple to Cambodia in 1962, although topographically it made more sense for the Thai claim to have been upheld.

The decision was seen as a huge victory for the tiny Khmer nation, and helped to reinforce the nationalist credentials and popularity of Cambodia's then monarch, Norodom Sihanouk, who had championed the fight.

The four levels of temple ruins straddling the 900m escarpment have a long and bloody history.

Thousands of Cambodian refugees perished there in 1979 after fleeing Pol Pot's fanatical Khmer Rouge regime, when Thai soldiers forcibly expelled them, ordering them down a perilous cliff track that was riddled with landmines into the clutches of the waiting Maoist rebels.

After 1979, the site was shared by the Thai army and Khmer Rouge, which established a nearby base.

In 1994, two Belgian tourists who crossed from the Thai side attempting to reach Cambodia were murdered by the fanatical rebels.

Several attempts in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Cambodia's Hun Sen government troops to reclaim the temple were bloodily repulsed by the Khmer Rouge guerillas operating from their mountaintop perch.

Today, however, the area is a popular tourist attraction.