An Upbeat Sihanouk Heads for Cambodia Talks

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian resistance leader, left Beijing on Friday on a trip expected to culminate with peace talks in Jakarta next month.

The Indonesian-sponsored “cocktail party”--so named because participants are to hold informal rather than formal negotiations--is aimed at bringing together representatives of Vietnam, the Vietnamese-installed Phnom Penh government and the three Cambodian resistance factions to search for a way to end the nearly 10-year-old war.

All parties to the conflict have recently expressed willingness to attend such a conference. Some, however, have attached conditions or changed their positions in ways that leave it uncertain whether all will ultimately attend.

Before leaving for Bangkok, Thailand, his first stop, Sihanouk called the planned talks “a good thing” and said that he will “say always ‘yes’ to all proposals” that would lead to a settlement.

“I’m in favor of dialogue,” he said. “I’m not Mr. Nyet. I’m not going to say ‘no’ to anybody.”

Sihanouk’s trip to Thailand is timed to overlap with a July 4-5 meeting of foreign ministers of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has provided strong support to the resistance effort to force Vietnam to pull its army out of Cambodia. He is also scheduled to visit several other southeast Asian countries.

While in Bangkok, Sihanouk also may meet Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who will be there to meet with ASEAN officials in a July 7-9 conference that comes after the formal meeting of foreign ministers. Shultz, who is making an eight-country Asian tour that includes the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and China, may try to push plans for the peace conference forward.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978, driving the brutal Khmer Rouge regime out of Phnom Penh and installing the government now headed by Premier Hun Sen. Hanoi has said it intends to withdraw all its troops from Cambodia by the end of 1990, even if there is no peace settlement.

Although Sihanouk, the former ruler of Cambodia, is the official head of the resistance coalition, it is the Communist Khmer Rouge that has the strongest guerrilla forces.

During their three years in power, from 1975 to 1978, the Khmer Rouge, headed by Pol Pot, ran a tyrannical and murderous regime. All other parties to the conflict, including Sihanouk and Vietnam, want to prevent the Khmer Rouge from regaining a dominant position.

Even China, which has provided strong support to the Khmer Rouge, favors creation of a four-party coalition government headed by Sihanouk that would include the Cambodian factions on both sides of the conflict.