House Panel OKs Aid to Cambodian Resistance

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, acting over the Reagan Administration’s objections and over warnings against new military involvement in Southeast Asia, voted Wednesday to funnel $5 million in military assistance through Thailand to non-communist resistance forces battling the Vietnamese in Cambodia.

The aid provision, part of a $14.5-billion fiscal 1986 foreign aid bill that cleared the committee by voice vote, survived--on a 24-9 vote--an effort by Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) to dilute it by restricting it to humanitarian aid.

The aid for the Cambodian resistance won overwhelming bipartisan support despite cautions from a number of committee members that it would, in the words of Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.), “put the American flag” in the middle of another conflict in Southeast Asia.

“All of us feel the shadow of Vietnam in the committee room,” said Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer (D-Pa.).

The United States has never given military aid to the Cambodian resistance, but Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) argued that such support would be no different from the assistance now being provided to anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan.

“It will not lead to another American involvement in Indochina,” Solarz said. “Precisely because of Vietnam, we are not going to send American troops back there.”

According to Solarz, who authored it, the Cambodian aid provision was drafted at the request of five Southeast Asian nations that have agreed to provide the bulk of the assistance needed by the resistance forces. He estimated that the U.S. share would be no more than 20% to 30%.

Solarz said the objective of the aid is to force the Vietnamese to retreat from Cambodia and discourage the Communist Khmer Rouge, the largest of the three resistance groups, from taking control again.

“Unless the non-communist forces are strengthened,” Solarz said, “Vietnam may one day withdraw and Pol Pot (the leader of the Khmer Rouge) will return.”

The Khmer Rouge were blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by killing and starvation during their rule from 1975 until they were driven from power by the Vietnamese invasion of late 1978. The Khmer Rouge withdrew to western Cambodia to carry on a guerrilla campaign against the Vietnamese and the Heng Samrin government installed in Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese.

The two non-communist resistance groups that would receive the aid are the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front and the forces of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, former Cambodian head of state. These two groups and the Khmer Rouge are joined in a tenuous coalition against the Vietnamese.

Leach contended that even though the Reagan Administration has not requested any aid for the Cambodian resistance movement, the President would be blamed if anything went wrong there. He predicted that the $5 million would be only the beginning of a massive flow of aid to Cambodia.

“I personally believe there is little stomach in the country for military involvement in Indochina,” Leach said. “If it is viewed in the international community as Vietnam revisited, we could well undercut international support for the Cambodian resistance.”

A number of opponents objected that the $5 million would be appropriated from economic aid funds even though it would be spent for military purposes. Others said the aid should be covert, not overt.

Among those who favored another approach was Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), who joked that the Democrats favoring the aid “find ourselves in a position of supporting military assistance in the only part of the world that the Reagan Administration hasn’t requested it.”

In the end, a number of committee members seemed to be swayed by an impassioned speech by Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), who said he got into politics because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam but felt the United States should not develop a blind spot about Southeast Asia as a result of that war.

“Fifteen years ago, the Cambodian was the victim of the worst in America,” he said. “Now, I feel the Cambodian is victim to the best in America--a new caution.”

Supporting the Cambodian aid were 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats; against it were two Republicans and seven Democrats.

Earlier in the day, the committee agreed by voice vote to require the President to certify in writing before giving aid to Pakistan that the country has no nuclear weapons. Although the United States has long suspected the Pakistanis of having nuclear weapons, no such restriction has ever been put on their aid.

It also voted 14 to 9 against an effort to restrict about half of the $56 million in aid to Bolivia if that government fails to keep commitments to begin eradicating coca plants that wind up in illegal cocaine shipments to the United States. Instead, it agreed to place restrictions on only $10 million of the aid.