Albright Pledges to Flex U.S. Muscle in Cambodia

In the strongest indication yet that the United States plans to play hardball with Cambodia’s current leadership, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pledged Wednesday to use U.S. leverage to ensure that Second Prime Minister Hun Sen restores the country’s previous coalition government and observes the rule of law.

Albright, who stopped in Los Angeles en route to a summit with Southeast Asian nations in Malaysia, said she would try to mobilize “broad international pressure” on Cambodian authorities to restore the 1991 Paris peace agreement that established the coalition government, to allow all political parties to operate freely and to conduct fair elections scheduled for next year.

“The international community was right to invest in peace in Cambodia, and we are right to insist now that the government in Phnom Penh live up to its obligation to respect democratic principles,” she said in a speech to the Pacific Council and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

The international community spent more than $3 billion to fund a U.N. peace effort and the country’s first multi-party elections in 1993. Hun Sen was part of the coalition government that resulted from that election but he staged a coup earlier this month that established him as the nation’s top leader.

The coup against Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who had won the 1993 elections and held the post of first prime minister until he was forced to flee the country earlier this month, is expected to be the top U.S. issue during Albright’s meetings with leaders from the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, which begin this weekend. Washington supports an ASEAN offer to help mediate in Cambodia, which had its invitation to join the alliance postponed after the coup.

Albright also had tough words for Myanmar, formerly called Burma, whose climate of lawlessness and its role as the world’s leading producer of heroin threaten regional stability, she said.

“The authorities there are among the most repressive and intrusive on Earth,” she told a packed luncheon audience at the Bonaventure Hotel. “It is only right that Burma is subject to international sanctions and consumer boycotts.”

In April, President Clinton imposed a ban on new U.S. investment in Myanmar in response to a constant pattern of “severe repression” by the “brutal” military regime.

But the United States appears headed for a diplomatic deadlock, at best, on Myanmar because ASEAN has just formally invited the nation to join its ranks. In stark contrast to U.S. punitive actions, the ASEAN nations of Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam instead advocate so-called constructive engagement--using diplomatic and economic leverage to try to influence Myanmar’s military junta.

Given that, the onus is on ASEAN to bring about change, Albright said.

Albright’s stop in Los Angeles is part of her campaign to reengage the American public in international affairs. She said the United States plays a more important role than ever in the post-Cold War world as a “pathfinder” shaping history and helping construct “a global network of purpose and law.”

She warned: “The greatest danger to America is not some foreign enemy. It is the possibility that we will turn inward; that we will allow the momentum towards democracy to stall, take for granted the principles and institutions upon which our own freedom is based, and forget what the history of this century reminds us--that problems abroad, if unattended, will all too often come home to America.”

Albright said the United States has an obligation to help every nation seeking to abide by the rules of the international system. If it fails to respond, she said, Americans would be known as neo-protectionists whose lack of vision produced “financial chaos” and allowed “tyranny and lawlessness to rise again.

“We will be known as world-class ditherers who stood by while the seeds of renewed global conflict were sown,” she said.

Additionally, diplomatic engagement has helped keep the United States economy healthy, she said. Under Clinton, more than 200 trade pacts have been finalized, resulting in an estimated 1.6 million new jobs and a steady increase in U.S. exports, she said.

California particularly benefited from this form of engagement, since the state now accounts for almost one-sixth of U.S. exports. Nine of the top 15 California markets are now in Asia, she pointed out. The growth of California’s export markets has helped replace defunct defense jobs with well-paying employment in high-tech fields.