Baker Urges Asian Nations to Block Khmer Rouge’s Return to Power

Secretary of State James A. Baker III called on Southeast Asian nations Friday to unite in a determined effort to prevent the murderous Khmer Rouge from returning to power in Cambodia.

Talking to the closing session of a two-day meeting with foreign ministers of the six-member Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, Baker said that a proposed international conference on Cambodia must devise a total settlement rather than satisfying itself with an international framework that would leave the issues of power-sharing to be determined later.

“A conference which might address only external issues--leaving key political questions unresolved--is a conference that cannot succeed,” Baker said.

Earlier, the Bush Administration had seemed unenthusiastic about the proposed conference, now scheduled to begin in Paris in late July or early August.

However, Baker stressed the importance of the meeting and said that the United States will attend.

The meeting is expected to include the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the Soviet Union, France, Britain and China. Also attending will be representatives of the six ASEAN states--Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand--and of Australia, Japan, India, Vietnam and Laos. The four competing Cambodian factions--two Communist and two non-Communist--will also be there.

“We are one mind on what must happen after Vietnam’s withdrawal,” Baker told the ASEAN foreign ministers in a brief public statement that preceded a closed-door discussion. “There is a critical need for ASEAN and Western unity to ensure the emergence and survival of a new, independent Cambodia.

“Our responsibilities to regional security, as well as to the Cambodian people, do not end with a Vietnamese withdrawal,” Baker said. “They must extend to the creation of an independent and stable Cambodia. It would be a tragedy if this triumph of ASEAN cohesion--the Vietnamese withdrawal--were undone through failure to follow through with a similar unity of purpose.”

To Withdraw by Sept. 30

The Hanoi government has announced that it will end more than 10 years of occupation of Cambodia by Sept. 30.

Baker seemed to imply that the international conference could impose a solution on the Cambodian parties--the non-Communist factions headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk and former Prime Minister Son Sann, the present Vietnamese-backed Communist government headed by Premier Hun Sen, and the Khmer Rouge, which is blamed for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians when it ruled the country in the late 1970s.

But he insisted that a comprehensive settlement must eventually provide for free elections to select a permanent government.

Baker told the press conference that the United States would prefer to have the Khmer Rouge excluded from the interim government that will organize the election. But he said that might not be “realistic.”

He said that Sihanouk has said he would prefer to have the Khmer Rouge in the government rather than “out in the jungle,” leading a civil war against the government.

Baker said the United States will not extend diplomatic recognition to Vietnam “in the near term” even though withdrawal from Cambodia was a major U.S. condition for diplomatic relations. He said Washington also will demand resolution of cases of U.S. servicemen missing during the Vietnam War before considering diplomatic ties with Hanoi.

Although the United States, the ASEAN states and most other international parties agree that Sihanouk is the only Cambodian leader with the broad political support needed to lead an interim government, the two Communist factions have far greater military powers.

U.S. officials maintain that only a firm international presence could prevent the Khmer Rouge from again imposing its will by force.

The foreign minister of Thailand, Siddhi Savetsila, said that ASEAN has long supported a comprehensive settlement in Cambodia. But he indicated that the bloc has little stomach for imposing solutions on the four Cambodian factions.

“I wish to underscore that we subscribe to the principle of non-interference in others’ internal affairs,” Siddhi said. “However pressured we are to arrive at a settlement, we cannot and we must not coerce the (Cambodians) into any agreement against their own free will.”