Word: lons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Developments in neighboring Cambodia were equally unsettling. In Phnom-Penh, anti-Communists led by Premier General Lon Nol and Deputy Premier Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk as chief of state and ordered North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops out of Cambodia. In a number of border clashes with Communist troops, the Cambodian army called for - and got - help from U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. With the war continuing in South Viet Nam and with the North wrestling with the grave problems that have grown out of the conflict, all four states of Indochina were on the boil...
Last summer Sihanouk made the two men who eventually overthrew him the principal figures in a "movement of salvation" designed to energize Cambodia's stagnant economy. Both had been key officials for some time. Lon Nol is a quiet, pragmatic 56-year-old general who has been Cambodia's best-known anti-Communist for many years. He became head of the national police in 1951 and entered the army in 1952, taking part in operations against the Viet Minh invaders until the end of the French war in Indochina. Three years after joining the army, he became...
Prince Sirik Matak, 56, who helped Lon Nol depose Sihanouk, is the scion of the Sisowath branch of the royal family (Sihanouk is of the Norodom branch). A more colorful figure than Lon Nol, he could emerge as Cambodia's real new leader. Though he has practically made a career out of publicly opposing Sihanouk on major issues, his unquestioned ability has all but guaranteed him a succession of important government posts. With Lon Nol, he has long fought Sihanouk's policy of tolerating the Communist border presence, but he has struggled hardest to free the economy...
...familiar gambit - leave at a time when trouble is brewing, come back after the situation has worsened, point out how inefficient the temporary chieftains have been and then create a flurry of activity that resembles a solution. This time, however, Sihanouk's absence simply gave Lon Nol and Sirik Matak time to plot...
...Sihanouk's absence, the government has been run by Premier Lon Nol, formerly a top-ranking general, and by Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, the Deputy Premier. Both are right-leaning anti-Communists who could be seeking to consolidate their own power by carrying the policy of coolness toward Hanoi and the Viet Cong farther than Sihanouk would wish. When informed of the riots, the Prince accused "certain personalities" of trying to throw Cambodia "into the arms of an imperialist capitalist power." He warned that he could be toppled by a right-wing coup...