WORLD : No Pact Expected in Cambodia Talks

A 19-nation conference on Cambodia will end Wednesday with no peace agreement for the war-torn Southeast Asian state, a French spokesman said today.

“The conference will end tomorrow, and it will end with the publication of a communique which will undoubtedly be fairly brief,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean Gueginou told a news conference. He said the monthlong talks will resume in Paris “perhaps in the spring, whenever it might appear to have more chance of succeeding.”

Gueginou said the conference had decided “it was too early to reach an agreement, but it was not too early to begin again working for one.”

The four warring Cambodian factions at the talks have failed to break a deadlock on five major points, especially the two key issues of power-sharing and setting up an international peace-monitoring mechanism.