Cambodia Talks Get ‘Off Ground’ : Atmosphere Described as Good; Conference Will Resume Today

Cambodia’s warring factions began unprecedented talks Monday in a search for peace but remained locked in disagreement on how to achieve it.

With all sides holding unbending positions, their main accomplishment was to get through the day without a walkout. Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, who organized the talks at this hilltop resort outside Jakarta, said the proceedings were “on the whole . . . productive.”

“What is important to note,” he told reporters at the conclusion of nine hours of discussions, “is that for the first time the parties directly involved, as well as others concerned . . . have been sitting down and talking to one another, rather than past one another.”

A Western diplomat based in Jakarta noted: “Obviously the meeting has gotten off the ground.”

Never Sat Down Together

Throughout nearly 10 years of conflict, while Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, ousted the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and installed a government allied with Hanoi, the antagonists have never before sat down together.

Alatas described as “quite good” the atmosphere of the closed-door talks, held in a former presidential palace here. He said they will be resumed this morning.

The participants, he said, outlined their positions Monday and agreed on some general goals, such as withdrawal of the remaining Vietnamese troops from Cambodia and establishment of a neutral, nonaligned government. According to the Indonesian minister, the participants will now try to “narrow divergences” on how to achieve those goals.

Politically, the initiative was seized by Hun Sen, premier of the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh. Hun Sen, alone among the contending Cambodian leaders here, held a press conference at the end of the day. He disclosed a seven-point peace plan that contains little new except one wrinkle clearly designed to appeal to former Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk, who is in Jakarta but not taking part in the talks.

As part of his plan, which he said he had presented Monday morning, Hun Sen called for the formation of a National Reconciliation Council under Sihanouk that, after a cease-fire, would organize national elections in Cambodia.

However, Hun Sen rejected a demand by Sihanouk and the leaders of two other resistance groups, including the Khmer Rouge, that the Phnom Penh government be dissolved and replaced by a four-faction provisional government under Sihanouk.

“That is not acceptable,” Hun Sen told reporters.

Would Speed Up Pullback

His plan also accelerates the target date for the withdrawal of the estimated 100,000 remaining Vietnamese troops. He said they would be pulled back across the frontier by December, 1989, or at the latest by the end of March, 1990. Hanoi has said the troops will be withdrawn by the end of 1990, or earlier if a political settlement can be reached.

But Hun Sen made the accelerated schedule contingent on the end of foreign military aid and sanctuaries for the resistance guerrillas. China supplies the vast majority of arms for the resistance, and Thailand is the site of many Cambodian refugee camps that provide most of the guerrilla recruits.

The factions remain divided not only on the question of a provisional government but also on how a cease-fire should be policed, the form of a new government and other important points. On most issues, the three resistance groups line up against Hun Sen’s government, but on one critical point--the future of the Khmer Rouge--the balance appears to be 3 to 1 the other way. Hun Sen, Sihanouk and the other resistance leader, Son Sann, agreed that the Khmer Rouge, which fields the strongest guerrilla army, cannot be allowed to return to power in Phnom Penh.

‘New Holocaust’

In an interview published Monday in Paris, Sihanouk warned of “a new holocaust” in Cambodia if Vietnamese troops withdraw without some political solution in place to restrain the Khmer Rouge, whose 1975-1979 reign took the lives of more than a million Cambodians, by most estimates. His remarks appeared to be aimed directly at China, the Khmer Rouge sponsor.

Despite the longstanding antipathy between Cambodia and Vietnam, and now among Cambodian factions themselves, movement in the talks here at Bogor reflects an apparent sense among the delegates that China and the Soviet Union, Vietnam’s chief sponsor, want the Cambodia conflict resolved because it has become an impediment to their own improving relations.

Still, Alatas and other organizers of these talks expect to do no more than establish goals that would be the subject of some future quorum on Cambodia. The Indonesian hosts tried not to raise hopes, keeping the meetings as informal as possible. Initially, they were billed as a “cocktail party,” but Alatas assured reporters that throughout the day Monday, none of the delegates had “anything stronger than a Miranda,” a popular Asian soft drink.