Word: thailander
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...conference is the result of an initiative by French Foreign Minister Jean François-Poncet. His earlier appeal for more aid to Cambodia spurred a nationwide "S O S Cambodia" campaign that has raised $2 million from French citizens. Three French medical teams are working in refugee camps in Thailand, while the hospital ship lie de la Lumière, which is now headed for Thailand, has cared for thousands of Cambodian and other Indochinese refugees. Even the French Communist Party has offered to help the starving Cambodians through a "Sanitary and Medical Aid Committee for the Cambodian people...
Despite the best efforts of the Thais and international relief agencies, the aid being provided to the 80,000 Cambodian refugees who have reached Thailand is makeshift and inadequate. TIME Hong Kong Bureau Chief Marsh Clark last week visited a camp that had been hastily set up to care for 30,000 refugees at Sakaew, 40 miles west of the Cambodian frontier. Most of the refugees had taken shelter from blinding rainstorms in huts constructed of poles and plastic sheets; small blue tents had been set up for dozens of orphans. Field kitchens were preparing high-protein rice gruel...
...Besides the sick and hungry refugees, the camp also contained a contingent of Khmer Rouge soldiers who had been beaten back into Thailand over the past three weeks by a Vietnamese offensive in the border areas. Though far better fed than the other refugees, toughened to hardship and accustomed to living by their wits in the jungle, the Khmer Rouge and their entourage had clearly reached the limit of their endurance. They did not look like human beings in the accepted sense of the term but rather like wild animals, completely brutalized. They slept huddled side by side like beasts...
...advantage enjoyed by the Khmer Rouge is their ability to make tactical retreats into Thailand, where they rest and regroup?much to the discomfiture of the neutral Thais. Some 30,000 Khmer Rouge and their supporters crossed into Thailand last month during a Vietnamese offensive, and reportedly have since returned to Cambodia, presumably having hidden their arms there. One obvious danger is that Hanoi might risk a direct attack into Thailand. Said a top Western diplomatic observer in Bangkok last week: "The war can easily spill over into Thailand. Hanoi wants very badly to get rid of the Khmer Rouge...
...blunt that possibility, Washington has sold Bangkok $400 million worth of sophisticated weapons in the past fiscal year, including 150 M48 tanks. A spokesman for the Defense Department said last week that shipments of arms to Thailand had been speeded up during the past several months because the U.S. has been concerned that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia might spread to other countries...