The Cambodian Mission Must Not Fail

A sense of deepening crisis engulfs the tortured U.N. peacekeeping effort in Cambodia. The plan to hold democratic elections in May is in serious jeopardy.

A wave of assassinations and grenade attacks has shattered the fragile peace agreed upon two years ago by Cambodia’s four warring factions. In November, 1991, Prince Norodom Sihanouk returned triumphantly to Phnom Penh and was touted as Cambodia’s best hope for unification. But now he has retreated to Beijing, saying he will no longer cooperate with U.N. peacekeepers or the Vietnamese-installed administration of Premier Hun Sen in Phnom Penh.

Allowing the Paris peace treaty to unravel plays into the hands of the murderous Khmer Rouge, which--although it signed the agreement--has been doing its best to sabotage the election by refusing to disarm as required.

The United Nations and Sihanouk must cooperate anew to allow Cambodians to vote their political will after suffering two decades of conflict and 13 years of civil war. Despite the fact that the Khmer Rouge has refused U.N. teams entry to about 15% of the country, more than 90% of eligible voters have been registered and 20 parties have been formed.

And so Yasushi Akashi, head of the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia, late last week took the unusual action of instituting sweeping measures to end a surge of political attacks that have left at least 30 people dead and scores wounded. Half of the victims were ethnic Vietnamese settlers assaulted by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the Maoist group that killed more than a million Cambodians during its reign from 1975 to 1979. The others were mostly opponents of Hun Sen.

Sihanouk sent word from Beijing, where he has been living since last November, that he was no longer cooperating with U.N. peacekeepers because they failed to protect the royalist party, led by his son, Prince Ranariddh, from attacks by Phnom Penh government forces.

The U.N. effort costs $2 billion, numbers 16,000 troops and 2,000 civilians and is one of the largest and most high-profile U.N. peacekeeping efforts ever. Troops will now arrest suspects for serious human rights violations. U.N. lawyers will investigate, indict and prosecute offenders under a penal code drafted by U.N. officials. The action is believed to be a first for U.N. peacekeepers.

This effort should answer the concerns of the mercurial Sihanouk, whose cooperation is necessary to rekindle the spirits of the Cambodian people. The prince, having made his point to U.N. peacekeepers, should return to Phnom Penh and rally the people to back the elections.

With the Khmer Rouge once again following a deadly path, the U.N. peacekeeping operation must succeed. Its failure would not only be potentially catastrophic for Cambodia, but it would be a severe setback and establish a terrible precedent for the United Nations.