Word: cambodians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Phnom-Penh, the Cambodian capital, lay encircled by Communist forces. All five highways leading to the city were under siege, and three outposts along the road to the provincial capital of Takeo had been lost. More important, the Communists had severed, for the moment at least, the vital Mekong River supply route from South Viet Nam. A convoy of about a dozen ships, already ten days overdue in the Cambodian capital, was delayed in the Vietnamese port of Vung Tau while the Cambodian armed forces and U.S. bombers tried to clear the riverbanks of enemy rocket launchers...
...effect of Nixon's January bombing threat was to harden the already obdurate position of the Cambodian guerilla forces led by Prince Sihanouk, whom Nixon refused to speak with during the February 1972 China trip, according to Harrison Salisbury's recent book To Peking and Beyond. The Cambodian resistance leaders alleged on January 26 that the United States had plans to destroy their zone of control, which they claim constitutes 80 per cent of the land area and 90 per cent of the population...
...certainly could not have attempted such a "bluff" without encouragement in the form of assurances of continued aid from Washington. As alluded to by Prince Sihanouk on February 27, although his Vietnamese allies had removed the bulk of their troops from Cambodian territory in accordance with the Paris agreement signed on January 27, the United States had not only continued its bombing and military assistance to Lon No1 but it had also maintained support personnel in Phnom Penh...
Sirik Matak's proposal appears amenable to the position outlined by Prince Sihanouk on March 23, 1970, although the very complexity of the Cambodian situation would appear to work against a rapprochement. It is difficult to determine whether Sirik Matak is sincere about his proposal or if he will ever again be in a position to implement it, although the reported purge last weekend of Lon Non may help Sirik Matak's chances. Sihanouk has repeatedly said that he would never negotiate with the "Lon No1 clique," and his superior military position at present would seem to give him little...
...question now is whether the Cambodian regime can survive until the shooting is somehow stopped. Washington officials frankly worry about the similarity between Cambodia today and South Viet Nam in the early 1960s. Saigon was then ruled by the aloof and autocratic Ngo Dinh Diem and his ambitious younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu; they were toppled in a 1963 coup that had active U.S. encouragement. Cambodia has the somewhat mystical Lon Nol, paralyzed on his left side as the result of a 1971 stroke, and his younger brother Lon Non, a vain and ruthless army general...