Cambodia Seeks to Internationalize Temple Row with Thailand

In this July, 2008 photo, a Cambodian soldier stands guard at an entrance gate to Preah Vihear temple on the Cambodian-Thai border. (Photo: AP)

By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR
The Irrawaddy, IPS WRITER
Monday, August 23, 2010

BANGKOK — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is threatening an international showdown with neighboring Thailand over the vexed question of managing a 10th- century Hindu temple, an architectural jewel of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilisation.

Cambodian has put the government of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on notice that it would seek multilateral fora—either the United Nations or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—to resolve Bangkok’s delaying tactics over a management plan for the Preah Vihear temple near the two countries' border.

Cambodia has approached Vietnam, the current chair of the 10-member Asean of which both Thailand and Cambodia are members, to step into dispute, says Koy Kuong, spokesman for Cambodia’s foreign ministry. “We will also discuss border issues when UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visits Cambodia in October.”

“Thailand wants a bilateral solution to this problem but it keeps delaying by pushing for more rounds of meetings,” Koy said during a telephone interview from Phnom Penh. “We have been patient and have exercised our restraint, and have not given up on a bilateral outcome.”

“(But) Cambodia cannot wait for long,” he argued. “Thailand should not be afraid of using multilateral mechanisms if they think they are correct. We are preparing to seek multilateral mechanisms to help us move forward on Preah Vihear.”

Hun Sen appears to have the upper edge in the fate of Preah Vihear’s future as a World Heritage Site, a status that the UN-backed World Heritage Committee (WHC) awarded to Cambodia in 2008. The country has another World Heritage Site in the sprawling, 12th century Angkor Wat complex.

The Preah Vihear issue has made its way into the domestic troubles that the Abhisit administration faces, in a tussle that continues to chip away at Thailand’s credibility on the world stage. On Tuesday, the Thai parliament delayed a debate on Thai-Cambodian boundary talks after legislators caved in to pressure by a vocal ultra-nationalist protest group, one whose supporters had helped bring the Thai premier into power.

The Network of Thai Patriots, which mounted a recent protest outside the Bangkok office of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), has been turning the heat on Abhisit to protect the area where Preah Vihear stands along the Thai-Cambodian border, claiming that it is part of Thai territory.

Against this backdrop, the Thai government has argued that disputes over border territory be resolved bilaterally through the Thai-Cambodian Joint Boundary Committee. “As long as the demarcation (of the border) has not been finished, Thailand cannot cooperate with any decision by the WHC,” Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya wrote in a July letter.

Thailand’s claim that it has a stake in the area where Preah Vihear sits goes to the heart of the dispute with Cambodia, threatening to turn the temple, perched on top of a steep cliff, into a major flashpoint of tension between the two South-east Asian kingdoms.

“The nationalists have demanded that Abhisit’s government revoke the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on boundary demarcation signed with Cambodia in 2000 on grounds that the pact recognized a map that in their view Thailand had never accepted,” wrote Supalak Ganjanakhundee in Thursday’s edition of ‘The Nation’, an English-language daily. 'Abhisit said he also believed Thailand has never recognised the map, but he cannot revoke the MoU since it was signed by (a former leader of his party as then premier).'

Thai academics like Puangthong Pawakapan argue that Bangkok’s recalcitrant position toward its eastern neighbour could prompt Cambodia to go as far as seeking the views of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in 1962 ruled that the Preah Vihear temple was situated in Cambodian territory.

“Cambodia still has the right to request the ICJ to interpret the 1962 verdict to clarify where is the border line in the disputed area,” says Puangthong, an assistant professor in international affairs at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

The ICJ, based in The Hague, had based its verdict on a 1907 map drawn up when Cambodia was under French colonial rule.

Its judges also noted that the rulers of Siam, as Thailand was then known, had accepted this map without protest for five decades.

It was this verdict that helped secure for Cambodia World Heritage status for the Hindu temple in 2008, an event that triggered a right-wing backlash in Thailand.

Cambodia’s effort to get the temple’s management plan approved by the WHC at its meeting in Brasilia in late July prompted another round of Thai nationalist chest-thumping, this time over a 4.6 square-kilometre slice of land near Preah Vihear, which they say belongs to Thailand according to the country’s maps.

Against the backdrop of Thai opposition, the WHC postponed till next year a vote on the Cambodian management plan for Preah Vihear. This may well mean that this will remain pending for years, as is the case with that international symbol of territorial disputes—Jerusalem.

Cambodia may have to 'rework' its management plan for the next council meeting in 2011, a neutral diplomatic source familiar with the WHC process in Brasilia told IPS.

But Hun Sen knows where he stands on the matter of this 4.6-km area that Thailand says is 'overlapping' with its territory. “I don’t know this area of 4.6 square kilometres, so how can I ask my people and army to withdraw (from it)?” he asked.