Southeast Asian Nations, Allies Meet for Cambodia Talks

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Malaysia on Friday to begin talks on how to defuse the Cambodian crisis, an effort that U.S. officials now concede may be prolonged and whose results may not be fully realized until scheduled parliamentary elections next year.

Albright will meet over the next three days with counterparts in the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and their allies to devise a common strategy for helping to restore democracy to the region’s most troubled country. She also will meet with the new U.S. special envoy for Cambodia, Stephen J. Solarz, who has held talks over the past week with all major parties to the crisis.

The annual ASEAN summit has taken on an air of crisis management since a coup by Cambodia’s Second Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this month against rival First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh. At a broader level, the joint U.S.-ASEAN effort also reflects the emergence of the Southeast Asian bloc as one of the most dynamic diplomatic and economic groupings on the world stage.

Albright on Friday welcomed as “very important” a statement by Hun Sen indicating that he would cooperate with ASEAN, which would be a policy reversal; he had earlier balked at any intervention. But she also cautioned that the Cambodian leader’s remarks were contradictory and did not signal a breakthrough. Other U.S. officials questioned Hun Sen’s seriousness and intent.

The U.S. also will monitor a debate and vote by lawmakers Monday in Cambodia’s National Assembly on proposed new co-Prime Minister Ung Huot, the former foreign minister and a breakaway member of Ranariddh’s FUNCINPEC party who has recently sided with Hun Sen. But that session is unlikely to solve the crisis, U.S. officials say.

The U.S.-ASEAN goal is to find ways to revive the 1991 Paris peace accords, end the renewed violence and restore an open political system in which all parties can operate freely. But rather than try to force Hun Sen to undo the putsch, the U.S. is now focused on scheduled May elections to supplant it.

Albright told reporters that the United States will look for “benchmarks” in the preelection period, including: the readmittance to Cambodia of Hun Sen rivals who have fled, an open campaign with a free press and an environment in which voters can freely determine for whom they will vote.

“Everyone sees elections as a one-day event, but it’s a process,” she said. “What we would like to see is preparation for elections.”

U.S. officials declined to comment on speculation that they might also be exploring whether the election might be held sooner, in part to prevent Hun Sen from becoming too entrenched in power.

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In addition to consulting with the ASEAN nations--Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and new members Myanmar and Laos, admitted this week--Albright will talk with ASEAN allies represented in Kuala Lumpur, such as China, Russia, Japan and Australia.

But ASEAN, a coalition of disparate states formed to counter regional instability spawned by the Vietnam War, is clearly taking the larger role in trying to end the Cambodian crisis, U.S. officials conceded Friday.

The organization, which groups nations with 488 million people--or about 8% of the world’s population--can do so largely because of its growing dynamism. It represents countries with the world’s fastest-growing economies over the past two decades, according to the U.S. State Department.

The member countries’ explosive economic growth, estimated to reach an average 8% over the next two years, has made the group the fourth-largest U.S. trade partner--with U.S. expectations that the organization will move up to third and replace Japan by the turn of the century.

Annual two-way trade now totals $109 billion a year, supporting 700,000 American jobs, U.S. officials say. American exports to ASEAN countries increased by 50% over the past two years.

Politically, ASEAN is now at the “cutting edge of leadership in the developing world,” said a senior U.S. official accompanying Albright.