Response to coup is 'posturing'

For some Cambodia's Hun Sen is a bully and a despot; for others he is impressive and democracy-oriented.

RICHARD S. EHRLICH
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Hailing Prime Minister Hun Sen as "a democracy-oriented person" superior to other Cambodian politicians, the New York-based US-Indochina Reconciliation Project says President Clinton won't support a fight to topple him and "Congress can't run a guerrilla war" on its own.

Financed by the US State Department, the United Nations Development Programme and other organisations, the USIRP's executive director John McAuliff said in an interview: "The US should end its suspension on aid.

"That has to do with Washington politics, and nothing to do with the situation here. "It's partisan politics, for the Republicans to beat up on Clinton", and blame the White House for the crisis in Cambodia, he said.

"Washington is posturing on this."

After meeting Hun Sen for two hours on August 10, Mr McAuliff said: "I found him more mature, and more balanced in his political views" than ever before.

"Hun Sen is an impressive leader who stands head and shoulders above anyone I've met in Cambodian politics."

Mr McAuliff added: "In a Cambodian historical and cultural context, I would say he is a democracy-oriented person. The assumption that Cambodia could be a model democracy is at variance with its own history."

Mr McAuliff blasted the international media for casting the current struggle between ousted Prince Norodom Ranariddh and victorious Hun Sen, as "a good guys, bad guys, situation".

Prince Ranariddh's self-exiled ally, former finance minister Sam Rainsy, "has been very effective" in creating a favourable opinion in Washington for their side, in contrast to Hun Sen's unsuccessful bid to influence US politicians, he added.

Referring to declarations by Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy that they will fight in the jungles to restore Prince Ranariddh to the prime ministry, Mr McAuliff warned: "Sitting on the border, calling for a civil war, isn't realistic."

The current battles along the Cambodian-Thai border might inspire a Republican-dominated US Congress to express support for a fight against Hun Sen, but without President Bill Clinton's approval, "Congress can't run a guerrilla war".

The USIRP, founded in 1985, says "its primary goal" is to help "reconciliation between the United States and Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam" in the aftermath of the US-Vietnam War which scarred all four nations.

Many of its programmes involve educational exchanges, cultural performances, speaking tours, visits by US and Southeast Asian officials, and conferences to boost business, aid and development in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The non-profit USIRP's annual $500,000 (15.5 billion baht) budget comes from the American Friends Service Committee, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the UN Development Programme, the State Department's US Information Agency and other groups.

The USIRP has organised speaking and learning tours in the United States for Cambodian Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, State Secretary for Information Khieu Kanharith, former Vice Foreign Minister Long Visalo, and Buddhist leaders Tep Vong and Oum Som.

During their talk, Hun Sen stressed to Mr McAuliff a "chronology" of the tank-led battles in the streets of Phnom Penh on July 5 and 6 that killed at least 40 people and resulted in Prince Ranariddh's self-exile along with some of his supporters.

Hun Sen repeated that Prince Ranariddh was allegedly trying to seize total power by smuggling tons of weapons, and transporting Khmer Rouge guerrillas and royalist troops, into the capital.

After hearing testimony from officials on both sides, Mr McAuliff said: "I'm hesitant to make a judgment" about who was right and who was wrong during the July violence.

"I'm not sure I condemn either side.

"I am inclined to think Ranariddh was off the rails in his negotiations with Anlong Veng" where Pol Pot and other senior Khmer Rouge guerrillas have a stronghold in northwest Cambodia.

Prince Ranariddh has described those negotiations as an attempt to secure the Khmer Rouge's surrender and bring peace to Cambodia. Hun Sen insists it was a trick to unite forces with Pol Pot so they could assault the capital and destroy Hun Sen.

"Ranariddh was mostly responsible for the tension" leading up to the violent clashes in Phnom Penh, said Mr McAuliff.

Mr McAuliff meanwhile hailed Prince Ranariddh's replacement, new co-Prime Minister Ung Huot, as "patriotic" and a man of "integrity".

Skipping over the controversy about how some articles in the constitution were ignored to allow the National Assembly to vote Ung Huot into power, Mr McAuliff said: "Whether every 'i' was dotted or every 't' is crossed is not the central issue."

It is better to have Ung Huot's alternative "base of power" inside the government, instead of "civil war", he said.

"I don't regard Funcinpec (Prince Ranariddh's royalist party) people who are staying as 'puppets' or 'quislings'. They are a legitimate, alternative stream of Cambodian thought."

Prince Ranariddh and other Funcinpec politicians suffer the "disadvantage" of being "heavily expatriate" because many of them remained in France, America, Australia and elsewhere during much of the past 20 years, which resulted in them being out of touch with Cambodia's reality.

"Eighty percent of them were not here", and returned only four years ago to contest the UN-supervised election.

By contrast, Hun Sen and many of his supporters "re-created" Cambodia by working in the Hanoi-dominated government in the 1980s while the nation was under Vietnam's occupation, said Mr McAuliff.

He praised "Hun Sen's role in moving aside the old authoritarian line", which the regime enforced in those days, so that his "Cambodian Peoples' Party stopped being Marxist-Leninist".

Today, renewed confrontation between Washington and Phnom Penh could prove disastrous and further alienate the two nations from each other, he said.

"Hun Sen, in some of his interviews, is saying, 'If the US is going to be nasty with us, then we will remind the US of what it did here in the 1970s'," noted Mr McAuliff.

He was referring to the massive US bombardment of Cambodia from 1969 to the fall of the US-backed Lon Nol regime in 1975, when then-President Richard M. Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, tried in vain to destroy suspected communist Vietnamese infiltration along Cambodia's eastern border and also halt Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerrilla advance.

The US bombardments killed thousands of Cambodians and helped fuel Pol Pot's rebellion against Washington's military role in this Southeast Asian nation.

Hun Sen was a mid-level Khmer Rouge commander during the guerrilla war that enabled Pol Pot to rule Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and allegedly slaughter 1 million people in mass executions, torture, starvation, banishment and other deliberate policies.

Hun Sen defected from Pol Pot in 1977.

"I have been here 20 or 30 times since February 1981," said Mr McAuliff. He stressed the USIRP will "continue to work with the people here" because "the same people are in place at the functional level that we work with, on the whole", despite some changes after the military clashes and political turmoil.

Mr McAuliff, who arrived here on August 7, departed Cambodia on August 13.

* Richard S. Ehrlich is a former UPI correspondent who has reported from Asia for the past 19 years.