The World - News from April 6, 1989

The State Department praised Vietnam’s announcement that it will pull its estimated 70,000 troops out of Cambodia by Sept. 30, saying such a step would help restore peace there. Vietnam previously had said it would withdraw by the end of 1990, and by September only if a political settlement had been reached. A joint announcement by Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos attached no conditions to the planned withdrawal but said an international commission was invited to oversee the pullout and guarantee an end to foreign military aid to the parties, which include the Phnom Penh regime on one side and a three-faction resistance coalition on the other. Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia on Christmas Day, 1978, and drove out Premier Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, under whose four-year rule more than 1 million Cambodians died in forced evacuations of cities and towns.