Word: cambodian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Phnom-Penh, a Cambodian official scoffed at the idea of an effective U.N. peace-keeping force. In Moscow, TASS characterized the conference as a "provocative farce." Peking was outraged at the prospect of disarming the Khmer Rouge. At the U.N., the plan was opposed by Han Nianlong, China's acting Foreign Minister, who warned about Vietnamese "duplicity." At week's end a vague compromise plan was adopted that called for "appropriate arrangements" to ensure that armed Cambodian factions would not be able to prevent or disrupt elections-if any should ever occur...
There are major obstacles that will almost certainly dissuade the U.S. from taking China's advice. First of all, there is a serious question whether the Cambodian guerrillas, even if truly united under Sihanouk and even if aided on a large scale from the outside, could dislodge the Vietnamese. In addition, even if an alliance of convenience were eventually to triumph over the Vietnamese forces in the country, which are estimated at 200,000, there is the danger that Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge might then turn its guns against Son Sann and Sihanouk. Moreover, not even...
...different precedent was offered by the Mayaguez incident. On May 12, 1975, Cambodian forces seized the American merchant ship Mayaguez and its 39 crewmen in the Gulf of Siam. On May 14 the ship was freed, after U.S. fighter jets had sunk three Cambodian gunboats, the Marines had landed on Cambodia's jungle islet of Koh Tang, and the U.S. had bombed a Cambodian air base at Ream. As soon as the ship was seized, President Ford simply declared the matter "an act of piracy," then threatened military action. On May 14 he dutifully appealed to the United Nations...
...worst tragedies of this century. While any attempt to guess at the likely outcome had Sihanouk remained in power is speculative, War and Hope provides evidence that Cambodia's stability was threatened long before Lon Nol succeeded Sihanouk. Cambodia's aquiescence to North Vietnam's use of Cambodian border areas began to backfire as the North Vietnamese--who, contrary to popular belief, provided nearly all of the military might to topple Lon Nol's government in 1975--displayed their gratitude to Sihanouk's hospitality by supporting anti-government insurgencies in the border region...
...allowing for the likelihood that Cambodia lasted longer under Lon No1 than it would have under Sihanouk does not answer Shawcross' most forceful charge: that the Khmer rouge created the massive holocaust only because they had been "brutalized" by incessant American bombings and the actions of the U.S.-supplied Cambodian Army. This unsupported assertion has probably been the cause of more bad sentiment towards American involvement in Cambodia--and, indeed, anywhere else in the world--than any other aspect of American foreign policy in many years. But Shawcross' claim is almost completely false...