French Accused of Seeking Top Cambodia Role

While the peace agreement signed in Paris last month may have succeeded in slowing the pace of fighting among Cambodia’s four factions, skirmishing between France and other Western nations over the future shape of Cambodia appears to have just begun.

Western diplomats and relief officials say France appears to be mounting a high-level, coordinated campaign to take control of the international peacekeeping operation being formed in Cambodia, as well as making a determined effort to revive flagging French culture in its former colony.

France’s actions have led, some say, to disputes over issues such as who will command the United Nations peacekeeping forces; whether those troops--including those from English-speaking countries--have to speak French, and the removal of an American heading the Phnom Penh office of the World Health Organization in favor of a Frenchman.

At one point, a diplomat said, the conflict grew sharp enough that the United States threatened to withdraw financial support for the planned U.N. force.

“Cambodia is France’s last colonial jewel except for Tahiti,” said one Western diplomat. “They are trying desperately to turn the clock back.”

French diplomats at the United Nations deny that officials from their nation have created any problems and insist that France simply is fulfilling a special role in Cambodia.

But the United States reportedly became embroiled in a dispute between France and Australia over who would command U.N. military forces being sent to monitor a Cambodian cease-fire.

The French were demanding overall command of the force, which will be made up of troops from 23 nations and may eventually number 2,000 soldiers. A diplomat said the United States threatened to withdraw financial support for the force if the French cling to their demands.

Under a compromise worked out last week, a French army officer, Brig. Gen. Michel Loridon, arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday as the commander of the small military contingent attached to a preliminary U.N. peacekeeping force.

But an Australian, Maj. Gen. John Sanderson, will take over command of the military contingent of the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia, which will succeed the interim force in about six months and run the country until elections are held in about 18 months. The French officer will serve as Sanderson’s deputy under the compromise.

According to Western diplomats, another dispute settled by the threat of an American pullout was France’s demand that French be made the official language of the U.N. contingent.

While Cambodia was once part of the French-speaking colonial empire of Indochina, the language is rarely heard here now, having withered when the Khmer Rouge killed thousands of people whose only sin was knowing a foreign language.

Thousands of students are now enrolled in crash English classes in hopes of winning lucrative jobs. In part, English has gained popularity in Cambodia because other successful Asian nations, such as Japan, Thailand and Singapore, use English as a language of commerce.

The prospect of hundreds of Australian, New Zealand, Irish and Indonesian troops trying to communicate in French threatened to leave the U.N. transitional force in chaos. One Asian diplomat who communicates with the government in English called the French demand “utterly ridiculous.”

At a news conference Monday, Ataul Karim, the Bangladeshi diplomat who is the civilian chief of the U.N. interim force, said the official language of the group will be “English and French.”

But the French military commander refused to speak English at an impromptu news conference when he arrived Tuesday with the first contingent of 40 French soldiers.

At the United Nations, French Ambassador Jean Bernard Merimee on Tuesday emphatically denied that France is trying to dominate the U.N. peacekeeping operation.

As far as the use of French in the peacekeeping operation, Merimee said, “it is a rule established by the secretary general that the heads of peacekeeping operations must be able to speak in both languages of the U.N., French and English.”

Merimee, who denied that the French language has died out in Cambodia, also refuted the assertion that France has tried to force a French general on the peacekeeping operation. He said Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar had asked Loridon to take over the interim force. This was not “triggered” by France, Merimee said.

Besides seeking a greater French role in the peacekeeping force, France has brought enormous pressure on U.N. agencies to place French officials in senior management jobs, U.N. officials said.

The officials were particularly upset when the World Health Organization abruptly replaced an American doctor, Brian Doberstyn, with a French doctor as head of its Phnom Penh office. Doberstyn, a former U.S. Army expert in malaria and pediatric medicine, was transferred to Bangkok after only six months on the job. “Brian was absolutely the best man for this job, and he was pushed out of it for political reasons,” said a senior WHO official, who asked not to be named.

Another U.N. official commented that Doberstyn “was just the right man for the job. Malaria and pediatric medicine are Cambodia’s two biggest problems. And just when he gets things moving, the French yanked him out of his job.”

Although the country is moving toward English language education, the language of medicine is still French, thanks in part to the insistence of French aid officials who help run the country’s only medical school. Textbooks are provided only in French.

Another Frenchman, Eduard Wattez, was recently named head of the U.N. Development Program, which will coordinate reconstruction aid for Cambodia, although he is primarily an expert on Central Africa.

U.N. officials complained that the dapper Wattez, who is partial to bow ties, issued a memo early in his tenure requiring employees to wear ties to work, although the country is so informal and the weather so muggy that Prime Minister Hun Sen and other leading government officials reguarly appear in open-necked shirts.

Western aid officials have also expressed thinly disguised contempt for French government efforts to curry favor with Prince Norodom Sihanouk, returning on Thursday to head a four-party coalition government. The French government paid $250,000 to redecorate Sihanouk’s royal palace and immediately offered to provide the coalition government with a communications network.

But, at the same time, French contributions of vaccines against tuberculosis and malaria have dried up because of a lack of funds from Paris. France has also failed to pay its pledged donations to help Cambodian refugees along the Thai border, relief officials said.

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler at the United Nations contributed to this report.