More Cambodia Fighting Seen as Paris Talks Head for Failure

An international conference on Cambodia will end today in failure, an official of the French Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, and a senior U.S. official predicted that this will probably mean months of renewed fighting in Cambodia.

“It was too early to reach agreement,” Jean Gueginou, the French official, said of the 19-nation conference convened here to work out a peace formula for Cambodia.

He expressed hope that the talks between the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh and three resistance factions will be resumed “perhaps in the spring, when (they) will have more chance of succeeding.”

“The conference will end tomorrow, and it will end with a fairly brief communique,” Gueginou said. “There was not, at this stage, the possibility of movement on the part of any of the Cambodian factions.”

A Period of Testing

U.S. officials said they foresee “a period of military testing” as part of a power shakeout if Vietnamese occupation troops withdraw from Cambodia, as promised, by Sept. 27.

“After more than three weeks here in Paris,” a U.S. official said, “we unfortunately do not see that we will be able to move from the battlefield to the political process.”

U.S. officials, who support proposals put forth by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, a former national leader who now heads one of the resistance groups, blame the breakdown at the talks here on Vietnam and its Soviet supporters.

“We don’t have the sense that the Soviets are really leaning on Hun Sen,” the U.S. official said, referring to the premier of the Phnom Penh government.

U.S. policy, the official said, “is built around the idea of having Prince Sihanouk be the center, the focal point, of a national reconciliation government, a transitional political authority that would govern for a certain period of time until fair elections could be held.”

He declined to say whether the United States might get involved in supplying any of the factions in the military struggle. The United States, he said, is “not interested in fueling another civil war.”

However, he noted that proposals in Congress would arm anti-Communist resistance forces.

The official predicted that the fighting will be renewed and that “the realities on the ground will give people a clear sense of the real balance of forces.”

Sihanouk Faction Weak

Others noted that the military forces of Sihanouk and the other non-Communist resistance faction are together weaker than the government and the third resistance group, the Khmer Rouge.

After a hopeful start, the conference quickly broke down on several key points, notably whether the Khmer Rouge are to take part in an interim government. Under Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to early 1979, a period in which more than 1 million people were killed or died of hunger and disease. The Khmer Rouge was driven from power when Vietnamese troops invaded in late 1978 and Hanoi set up the present Phnom Penh regime.

Sihanouk had proposed that the Khmer Rouge be included in the interim government but was opposed in this by Hun Sen, among others.