Sihanouk Arrives in Beijing for Talks on Cambodia Peace

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the former Cambodian ruler, arrived in Beijing on Saturday for discussions with Chinese leaders aimed at promoting efforts to bring peace to his long-suffering nation.

“We are going to speak about the necessity for Cambodia to be an independent, neutral, unaligned country,” the resistance leader told reporters upon his arrival.

Sihanouk said he will meet today over dinner with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Xueqian, a former foreign minister, whom he described as “my old friend.”

The prince flew here just two days after the end of inconclusive talks in Indonesia among rival Cambodian factions and Vietnamese delegates. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, driving the brutal Khmer Rouge regime from power and installing the government now headed by Premier Hun Sen.

Sihanouk’s discussions here will form part of the background for the next key step in peace efforts--a meeting on Cambodia expected to be held in Beijing next month between Soviet and Chinese vice foreign ministers.

The Soviet Union backs Vietnam, whose armed forces keep the Hun Sen regime in power, while China has strongly supported the Khmer Rouge, now the strongest resistance faction, and Sihanouk, who has his own faction. Son Sann, a former Cambodian premier, heads a third group in the three-faction resistance coalition.

Sihanouk was deposed as head of state in 1970. Since then, he has been the exiled leader of one of the resistance factions.

While he resigned earlier this month as head of the resistance coalition, he is still seen by all sides as the likely head of any new Cambodian coalition government that could emerge from negotiations.

After resigning, Sihanouk sharply criticized the Khmer Rouge, his nominal resistance partners, and said that he wanted to avoid “certain sponsors of the coalition continuing to exploit the name of Sihanouk to allow the Khmer Rouge to seize power.” His comments were widely interpreted as veiled criticism of China.

In Beijing, Sihanouk renewed his attacks on the Khmer Rouge. “They are torturers,” he said. “They are not my good friends. How can they be my friends, since they are not friends of their own people?”

He said, however, that the Khmer Rouge cannot be denied some power in any peace settlement. “All Cambodian factions have to unite and find an honorable compromise among themselves . . . including the Khmer Rouge.”

“You cannot reject them. They are there. Nobody is capable of wiping out the Khmer Rouge. So we have to try to make them less dangerous by including them in a quadripartite government.”