JAKARTA: The prime ministers of Thailand and Cambodia agreed to meet with Indonesia’s president at a summit of Southeast Asian leaders to try to find a way to end repeated deadly clashes along their disputed border, officials said.
The border issue dominated the mood at the annual meeting that also had Myanmar’s bid to become chair of the regional grouping high on the agenda.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono opened the two-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, which is supposed to focus on steps needed to create an integrated regional economic zone by 2015.
But little can be accomplished, he said, without peace and stability between the 10 member countries.
To that end, Yudhoyono will host a meeting between the Cambodian and Thai prime ministers Sunday to try to hammer out a lasting cease-fire to end repeated outbreaks of fighting that have killed more than a dozen people over two weeks and forced nearly 100,000 villagers to flee.
Though agreement by both sides to accept mediation was a good sign — Thailand has previously said the matter must be resolved directly between it and Cambodia — it’s unclear how much can be accomplished given the acrimony.
The two sides came up with preconditions Friday for sending Indonesian observers to the border, but Cambodia quickly lambasted a request by Thailand to first remove troops from its own side of the frontier.
“Can you imagine that Cambodia withdraw from their own territory? It’s nonsense!” Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters at the summit Saturday.
Other security concerns on the table were terrorism following the death of Osama bin Laden and tensions over the potentially oil-rich Spratly islands claimed by China and four ASEAN nations — a dispute that worries the US as well. ap
The border issue dominated the mood at the annual meeting that also had Myanmar’s bid to become chair of the regional grouping high on the agenda.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono opened the two-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, which is supposed to focus on steps needed to create an integrated regional economic zone by 2015.
But little can be accomplished, he said, without peace and stability between the 10 member countries.
To that end, Yudhoyono will host a meeting between the Cambodian and Thai prime ministers Sunday to try to hammer out a lasting cease-fire to end repeated outbreaks of fighting that have killed more than a dozen people over two weeks and forced nearly 100,000 villagers to flee.
Though agreement by both sides to accept mediation was a good sign — Thailand has previously said the matter must be resolved directly between it and Cambodia — it’s unclear how much can be accomplished given the acrimony.
The two sides came up with preconditions Friday for sending Indonesian observers to the border, but Cambodia quickly lambasted a request by Thailand to first remove troops from its own side of the frontier.
“Can you imagine that Cambodia withdraw from their own territory? It’s nonsense!” Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters at the summit Saturday.
Other security concerns on the table were terrorism following the death of Osama bin Laden and tensions over the potentially oil-rich Spratly islands claimed by China and four ASEAN nations — a dispute that worries the US as well. ap
3 comments:
Cambodia must be wrong to claim her own property?
Siam, later known as Thailand, came into existence and grew to its present day Thailand on former Khmer empire which lost its western provinces to advancing Siamese army. As a result, successive Khmer kings paid a vassal tribute to Bangkok until France came to exercise its protectorate over Cambodia from 1863 to 1953. France then started to negotiate with Siam for a definite border demarcation and delimitation between France Indochina and Siam, and both had concluded a number of conventions and treaties (1904 and 1907) and many others. With regard to Cambodia, a Franco-Siamese border commission produced clearly marked maps and planted a number of border posts. In the process, three Cambodian provinces in north-north west were returned to Cambodia in exchange for a few Cambodian provinces, Trat, Chantabori, etc in the south sea border were given to Thailand.
This part of history has been put in the dark so as to arouse Thai irredentist claims that all the territory west of the Mekong were Thai and Thailand were forced by France to unduly give a lot of Thai land to Cambodia. The truth is and remains that it was Cambodia which had lost a great deal of land to Thailand. Yet Cambodia, a law abiding country, never claimed them back from Thailand, nor initiated any conflict with her neighbor. Then, in 1941, taking advantage of World War II with Japan’s occupation of French Indochina, Thailand annexed the western Cambodian provinces of Battambang, Siem Reap, Kompong Thom, but was forced to return them back to Cambodia under the Washington Treaty in 1946.
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As if a prey had been taken away from its grip, all the Thai myth of land ownership has been building up to justify Thailand’s military occupation of some Cambodian lands, in particular the temple of Preah Vihear and its surrounding in 1954, soon after Cambodia acceded to independence in 1953. After years of unfruitful negotiations, Cambodia, under Prince Norodom Sihanouk, brought the case to The Hague International Court of Justice (ICJ) which rendered a verdict on 15 June 1962 in favor of Cambodia. The ICJ verdict was crystal clear when it referred to the Franco-Siamese treaties and border maps produced by Franco-Siamese border commission, used ever since by both parties as valid and legal international documents. Most important, and Thailand cannot deny it, was a “Dangrek Map”, known as “Annex 1”, formed part of the 1962 ICJ decision. This “Annex 1” map is to this day crystal clear over the border lines between Thailand and Cambodia. Only blinds and bad faith sore losers, obsessively and madly, keep repeating until this day that the 1962 ICJ ruling recognized that only the temple belonged to Cambodia and not the ground surrounding it. Any honest person needs no PHD diploma to appreciate the very well explained ICJ decision.
Same period that the Thais secretly produced their own map, drawn on the US war maps, intended to replace the “Annex 1” map, with a new border line showing the so-called 4.6km2 parcel of land surrounding Preah Vihear temple they claimed, not as “contested area”, but as Thai territory, in flagrant violation of the 1962 ICJ verdict, a rarity in modern day world. This fact alone that they used an illegal and unilateral map constitutes an act of aggression and a casus belli.
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Arm with this illegal map, the Thai irredentist ultra nationalist group started to brainwash their fellow citizen, including young generation of scholars, and to fool foreign governments that Cambodia was encroaching on Thai territory. For instance, their representatives went around, with this illegal map, to fool UNESCO members when Preah Vihear temple was on the agenda of the World Heritage list. Obviously, their fabrication did not hold water and World Heritage Committee members just ignored it and unanimously approved the listing in 2008, thus reconfirming the 1962 ICJ decision in favor of Cambodia.
Thai irredentist group, probably for their political survival, started to act like outlaws against the whole world and to provoke military conflicts with Cambodia, accusing Cambodia of having started the war! Bangkok media picked it up to fool the public that Phnom Penh started this war for political and election purposes. It must be the other way around when, in 2008, Bangkok was under street protests from both yellow and red shirts that paralyzed business and airports operations for a few weeks. Honest people cannot accept such a misleading story from the aggressor. But some biased and irresponsible media likes also to entertain this myth when, with an air of superiority, they belittled the temple as a “tiny, crumbling, 11th century old” “ruins” claimed by both countries. UNESCO must then be wrong to list it as one of the World Heritage sites, and Cambodia must be wrong to claim her own property? Of course, the above is just a very condensed story showing how some bright people in Bangkok born with some inferiority complex, culturally speaking, spend their life to enlighten themselves by manipulating and distorting well known facts and history so as to demonize Cambodia and her past and present leaders.
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