Cambodia Minister Tapped to Replace Ousted Premier

The nation’s Australian-educated foreign minister, a moderate who says he can work with de facto ruler Hun Sen, was tapped by the remnants of his party Wednesday to succeed ousted Prince Norodom Ranariddh as co-prime minister.

“I put the interests of my country, my people, above anything else,” said Ung Huot, telling reporters he would accept the job of first prime minister. “Above political parties, above my boss, Ranariddh. I still feel respect for him, but the interests of the country indicate that Cambodia must go on.”

The nomination of Ung Huot was denounced as “an illegal and ridiculous move” by opposition leaders who maintain that no replacement for Ranariddh--who fled abroad--chosen under present circumstances could be anything more than a puppet of Hun Sen.

However, others described the foreign minister as a competent moderate with a track record of fighting corruption, a man who will help Second Prime Minister Hun Sen in the battle to legitimize his new government and win back friends and foreign aid.

“I am acceptable to the world,” Ung Huot told reporters after a lunch with officials from other Southeast Asian nations.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that while the United States had dealt cooperatively with Ung Huot in the past, it was “very concerned” about the decision.

“We see no evidence whatsoever that FUNCINPEC has met . . . and has elected, on a democratic basis, a successor to Prince Ranariddh,” Burns said. “We urge the authorities in Phnom Penh to refrain from announcing a new first prime minister until Prince Ranariddh’s political party has an opportunity to make a reasoned decision on this matter, free of coercion, free of intimidation.”

Some diplomats and Western aid workers expressed guarded hope that the appointment of a new co-prime minister would represent a step toward stability in a nation that has recently seemed precariously close to a resumption of two decades of civil war.

However, Ung Huot’s nomination must be approved by a vote of the National Assembly, which is scheduled to reconvene July 28 after a seven-month hiatus. With many lawmakers having fled the country in terror, a quorum is not assured.

The legislature had been paralyzed for months due to the bitter feud between Ranariddh and Hun Sen that erupted into fierce battles in the streets of Phnom Penh on July 5.

Ung Huot finessed an answer to whether Hun Sen had come to power in a coup. “There was fighting on July 5-6,” he said. “Suppose CPP [Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party] lost that battle. Would it be a coup by FUNCINPEC?”

At least 10 lawmakers were out of the country when the fighting began, and at least 15 more members of the 120-seat parliament have left the country in the past week, according to the English-language Cambodia Daily newspaper.

The constitution requires the presence of 84 of the 120 members of parliament for a quorum, and 80 votes would be needed to approve a new first prime minister.

This means Hun Sen’s CPP would need to secure the votes of 25 FUNCINPEC or other opposition party lawmakers in order to vote in Ung Huot.

“Don’t worry about that,” a Western diplomat said, predicting that Hun Sen, who at the moment has a monopoly on political and military power, will manage to round up enough lawmakers to vote for his man. “They want to do it, they will find a way to do it,” the diplomat said.

Political analyst Raoul M. Jennar laid out his criteria for assessing whether Hun Sen’s government is credible. If a quorum is reached, and if the National Assembly is able to convene without threats or intimidation or soldiers surrounding the building, and if lawmakers then vote their approval in a secret ballot, he said, “This [would be] a legitimate government.”

FUNCINPEC lawmakers who have fled to Thailand insisted that their colleagues in Cambodia are being intimidated or co-opted into rubber-stamping a candidate who is acceptable to Hun Sen. They have called on the international community not to recognize the “Hun Sen-installed government.”