No agreement yet for Thai-Cambodian foreign ministers’ border dispute meeting
CHA-AM, Thailand, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) – No new agreement has been reached yet after hours of negotiations between Thai and Cambodian delegations led by respective foreign ministers over the disputed border around the Preah Vihear temple on Tuesday at Thailand’s central resort town Cha-am, Phetchburi province.
The meeting between Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag and his Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong and a parallel study group by military and related border affairs officials opened on the morning at a hotel in Cha-am, some 220 kilometers southwest of Bangkok and near the beach resort town Hua Hin.
The meeting is aimed to find a peaceful solution to a long border dispute regarding a 4.6-sq-kilometer area around the 11th-century ruins of the Khmer-style Hindu temple of Preah Vihear, listed recently by UNESCO as a World Heritage, and to lay down foundations for future cooperation on demarcation and demining work along the disputed border.
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Thailand says border tensions eased as Cambodia talks open
HUA HIN, Thailand (AFP) — Tensions over an ancient Khmer temple have eased following the withdrawal of most soldiers from the ruins, the Thai foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday as new border talks opened with Cambodia.
“The situation is moving in a positive manner. The tension is now being cooled down,” Tharit Charungvat told reporters as foreign ministers from both countries began meeting in the Thai beach resort town of Hua Hin, southwest of Bangkok.
At the weekend, up to 1,000 Cambodian and Thai troops pulled back from a small patch of disputed land near Cambodia’s 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, suggesting that an end to the month-long military stand-off could be near.
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Be patient, Samak tells troops on border
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej yesterday advised soldiers guarding the border to be patient as Thailand and Cambodia attempt to resolve the row over the disputed area near the Preah Vihear temple through negotiations.
“All soldiers should help maintain ties between Thailand and Cambodia. You should be patient and ignore any attempt to cause rifts between the two countries,”the prime minister said during a visit yesterday to the border in Kantharalak district of Si Sa Ket, which is adjacent to Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province.
Mr Samak stressed the importance of Thai-Cambodian relations as the two countries are immediate neighbours and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
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Meeting on disputed border begins
(BangkokPost.com) - The bilateral meeting between Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag and his Cambodian counterpart Nor Namhong commenced on Tuesday morning in Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan province. The meeting aims to resolve the ongoing border dispute over Preah Vihear temple.
Director of the Department of Information and Foreign Ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat said the meeting will continue discussion from the previous Joint Border Committee (JBC) meeting in Cambodia’s Siem Reap on July 28 regarding possible reduction of troops from both sides at the disputed borderarea. He said the two neighbouring countries hope the meeting can prevent confrontation and restore normalcy.
According to Mr Tharit, the bilateral ties between Thailand and Cambodia are moving in a positive direction, but the problem takes time and patience from both sides.
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Thailand welcomes call for unity by Cambodia’s PM
Thailand yesterday welcomed Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s statement that the border disputes between the two countries need to be resolved through bilateral mechanisms. Foreign Ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat said the Cambodian leader’s stance was in line with Thailand’s as Bangkok also wished to find a solution to the Preah Vihear temple issue in a peaceful and amicable manner through bilateral mechanisms.
The existing mechanisms include meetings between the foreign ministers, the Thai-Cambodian Joint Boundary Commission (JBC) and the General Border Committee (GBC).
”Differences of views on boundary issues between two neighbouring countries are not unusual. Thailand and Cambodia have in common a 798-kilometre land border. Thailand shares the Cambodian prime minister’s view that both countries will be able to find a solution by working together,” said Mr Tharit.
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CAMBODIA: Questions over legality of evictions in name of development
PHNOM PENH, 18 August 2008 (IRIN) - Vanndy Sambath had lived next to Phnom Penh’s lush Boeng Kak lake for years, peacefully growing vegetables and accommodating tourists to support his family.
That all changed in 2006, when a contractor arrived and announced government-sponsored plans to fill in the lake, forcing his neighbourhood to relocate in the future.
Two years on, he worries for his family’s future. Finding a new job will be difficult, he told IRIN.
“They came here and didn’t give us a choice,”Vanndy said. “We haven’t moved yet, but we’re all scared when they come and clear us out. We don’t know what they will do.”
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Oil trumps pressure for fair elections in Cambodia
Unlike most other countries holding elections in transition to democracy, including our own Guyana, Cambodia in East Asia held imperfect elections on July 27 to choose a National Assembly of 123 seats. Like Guyana, Cambodia has a PR electoral system but with a bicameral parliament that has 61 Senators in the Upper House appointed by the King on recommendation from the various parties.
In my discussions with Cambodians during my recent visit, the ruling party and Prime Minister are not exactly popular, but people feel Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling CPP are best for stability of the country and they did not expect a free and fair election. In fact, international observers said the election failed to meet democratic standards but the international community has accepted the results and Hun Sen has proceeded to form a government. He “won” a landslide of 90 seats to maintain his domination of the country governing since 1985 with the help of neighbouring Vietnam communists and various local partners.
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In Cambodia, a rock ‘n roll revival
PHNOM PENH - Grainy black and white newsreel footage of B-52 bombing raids and fierce fighting are the images most frequently associated with Cambodia in the 1960 and early 1970s - not rock and roll, hot pants and wild dancing.
But when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, emptying the cities and systematically eradicating the so-called old culture as corrupt and decadent, they almost completely destroyed what was probably, for its time, the most unique and vibrant rock and roll scene in Southeast Asia.
“Cambodia definitely had one of the most advanced music scenes in Asia at the time,” agrees Greg Cahill, who is currently seeking financing to turn his 30-minute film on the most famous of the era’s female singers, Ros Sereysothea, The Golden Voice, into a fully-fledged biopic.
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Thailand, Cambodia Open Talks on Border Dispute
The foreign ministers of Thailand and Cambodia are meeting this week to end a border dispute over an ancient temple. As Ron Corben reports from Bangkok, the talks follow an agreement reached last week to pull back troops on both sides of the border.
The talks this week are the next step in reducing cross-border tensions sparked by a dispute over territory surrounding an 11th century Khmer temple that lies just inside Cambodia.
The meeting between the Thai Foreign Minister, Tej Bunnag and Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong, follows last week’s agreement by both countries to withdraw more than one thousand troops from around the border.
Nationalist sentiment on both sides of the border rose after Cambodia unilaterally sought United Nations World Heritage status for the Preah Vihar temple. Thailand had previously sought a joint application that would also include nearby land under Thai control.
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Hun Sen enters 34th year in power in Cambodia
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.
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