Cambodia Accord Would Help Ties, U.S. Tells Hanoi and Beijing

The Bush Administration has told both Vietnam and China that it is ready for friendlier relations if the two nations can pressure their Communist allies into participating in a balanced political settlement for Cambodia, according to a senior U.S. official.

“It is kind of a bellwether,” the official said of the Cambodia peace talks going on in Paris. “If we get a positive outcome, it will brighten the overall mood. . . . The Vietnamese want to normalize (diplomatic relations) with us. The Chinese want to look like good guys.”

The official acknowledged that the United States has very little direct influence with the political factions in Cambodia, which include two Communist and two non-Communist groups.

He said Washington has far more leverage with China and Vietnam, which in turn carry substantial weight with the two most contentious Cambodian factions, the Vietnamese-installed government of Premier Hun Sen and the murderous Khmer Rouge who ruled the country from 1975 through 1978.

Vietnam has long sought better relations with the United States, in part to persuade Washington to end its veto of World Bank and other international reconstruction loans to Hanoi. China wants to repair its relationship with the United States and other Western nations after its violent suppression of a pro-democracy movement in June.

The 20-nation Cambodia conference that began July 30 already has agreed to insist on a comprehensive settlement to end a decade of Vietnamese occupation and install a coalition government to guide Cambodia from its bloody past to a peaceful and nonaligned future.

But the Cambodian factions have not agreed to cooperate--or even to refrain from shooting at each other.

From Washington’s viewpoint, the key to any settlement is persuading the Hun Sen regime and the Khmer Rouge to play a subordinate role in an interim government led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the former head of state and the leader of one of two non-Communist factions. The second non-Communist group is headed by former Prime Minister Son Sann.

Despite their shared Marxist ideology, the Hun Sen government and the Khmer Rouge are enemies that have been fighting for decades and have continued their squabble at the Paris conference table.

The senior official said that if an accommodation could be reached between Vietnam and China, antagonists in a brief border war in early 1979, it would go a long way toward persuading their Cambodian allies. Vietnam provides weapons and political support to Hun Sen, while China supplies the Khmer Rouge.

The official expressed guarded optimism that the Paris talks would produce a settlement among the Cambodian factions, although “these people, to a man, have been fighting among themselves for three or four decades.”

The Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, caused the deaths of an estimated 1 million Cambodians by killings, starvation and disease when they controlled the country. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978, driving the Khmer Rouge from power and installing the government now led by Hun Sen. Vietnam has promised to withdraw its troops by the end of September. If the Cambodian factions are unable to reach agreement, the departure of the Vietnamese could produce a power vacuum and a renewed civil war.

Alan D. Romberg, a former State Department official who is now an Asian studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said that despite the centrifugal forces driving the Cambodian factions apart, pressure is increasing on both the Cambodians and their sponsors to reach an accommodation.

Important Relationship

“For Vietnam in particular, the relationship with the United States--which includes not just direct relations but also the U.S. green light for international financial institutions to participate in reconstruction of the country--is very important to Hanoi,” Romberg said. “If the Chinese are really convinced that the Vietnamese have withdrawn, they have no interest in promoting the Khmer Rouge as a dominant force in Cambodia.”

Romberg noted, however, that China and Vietnam may not be able to force their allies to go along with a settlement.

“I don’t think the Khmer Rouge are controlled by any means by China,” he said. “Hun Sen, while he would be strongly influenced by his relationship with the Vietnamese--if he thought he was being sold out, he would not go along.”

Nevertheless, Romberg said that China probably could prevent the Khmer Rouge from regaining total control by halting the supply of weapons and other equipment. “Without a continuing flow of weapons and military supplies, the Khmer Rouge can cause problems but not, in the end, win,” he said.

Poor Track Record

George A. Carver, a former deputy director of the CIA, was far less optimistic about the possibility of settlement.

“The guys who have the guns are the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese,” said Carver, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We would like to think the Chinese will make their proteges behave, but their track record is not very good. There is no solution that would be equally acceptable in Hanoi and Beijing, so the chances of them cutting a sweetheart deal are between negligible and nil.

“We keep hoping that other people will solve things so we will not have to face up to the thorny problems,” Carver said, “but I don’t think they will.”