Word: cambodias
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American intelligence experts have long suspected that chemical poisons developed in the Soviet Union have been used in military operations in Afghanistan, Laos and Cambodia. Eyewitnesses in all three countries have reported seeing "yellow rain" fall from the skies. Shortly afterward, victims on the ground have suffered burning sensations, convulsions and massive internal bleeding. Many have died painful deaths. Still, there had never been scientific evidence that the poison came from the Soviet Union. So the U.S. has withheld any official accusation of Soviet violations of a 56-year-old international agreement banning chemical weapons...
Most important, Bangkok was helped by a falling-out in 1979 between Viet Nam and the Maoist Thai Communist Party. Hanoi expelled Thai guerrillas from their sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos and confiscated their weapons and ammunition. The Thai Communists lost a second ally soon after when China sought support for Cambodia's Pol Pot regime from the five members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which Thailand belongs. ASEAN in turn demanded that Peking minimize its relations with Southeast Asian Communist parties. As a result, it has sharply reduced its support of Thai insurgents...
...fate of the long-suffering Cambodians but also the competing strategic interests of China and the Soviet Union. The Soviets have been subsidizing Hanoi at a cost of $3 million to $6 million a day since 1979, after the Vietnamese ousted the Peking-supported Pol Pot government from Cambodia. In turn, the Chinese have armed the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who have been harrying Hanoi's occupying army. Ultimately, Peking seeks to restore the Pol Pot regime to power in Phnom-Penh in spite of the fact that his Communist regime slaughtered an estimated 3 million Cambodians during a reign...
...same time, the U.S. has joined China and ASEAN in promoting a united front of the various forces in Cambodia fighting the Vietnamese. Since the main component would be Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, the Reagan Administration is in the anomalous position of backing, however obliquely, Communist combat forces. Says a senior State Department official: "We would be willing to provide political and psychological assistance, but we are not committed to military...
...complicate matters even further, U.S. policy in Cambodia is rooted in a strategy that extends far beyond Southeast Asia. At the U.N. last week, Haig put the matter bluntly. He told Moscow that as the "financier" of Viet Nam's occupation of Cambodia, the Soviet Union has a "special obligation" to resolve the issue. In the future, improved relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S. may be influenced by Moscow's behavior at conferences on Cambodia as well as in talks about getting out of Afghanistan...