Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen vowed yesterday to improve the country’s defense capabilities, but insisted there would be no war with Thailand after a deadly firefight erupted on their disputed border.
The two sides have agreed to a joint border patrol aimed at preventing a repeat of Wednesday’s clashes, which killed two Cambodian soldiers near the ancient Preah Vihear temple.
There was no word on when the joint patrols would start.
Hun Sen said that talks remained the best solution to the dispute over land around Preah Vihear, a UN World Heritage site in Cambodian territory and the focus of months of tensions.
“There will be no large-scale armed conflict because the two countries can still be patient,” Hun Sen told reporters after meeting his Cabinet.
At the weekly meeting, ministers held a moment of silence for the Cambodian soldiers who died. Seven Thais were also wounded in the clashes.
“Today our Cabinet, with the pride we received from protecting our territory, will discuss draft laws [to put the] national defense sector on top [of the agenda],” Hun Sen said, without elaborating on specific steps.
While Thailand has a 300,000-strong armed forces and a well-equipped air force, Cambodia’s much smaller military is badly equipped, badly trained and disorganized, a Western military official in Bangkok said.
Many of their Cold War-era weapons misfired during this week’s shooting, soldiers along the border said.
Hun Sen also rejected the help of mediators — a U-turn from Cambodia’s position earlier this year when officials spoke about bringing the land dispute to the UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide court yesterday denied former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary release from jail before he faces trial for war crimes.
Ieng Sary, 82, who appeared at the court wearing a blue shirt buttoned to the collar, had appealed to be let out of detention on the grounds that he was granted a pardon for a 1979 genocide conviction, and that the jail at the court did not have facilities to care for his frail health.
But Judge Prak Kimsan rejected Ieng Sary’s appeal, saying that his previous amnesty did not apply to the UN-backed court.
“Provisional detention is a necessary measure to ensure the security of the charged person, the presence of the charged person at proceedings and to preserve public order,” Prak Kimsan said.
Ieng Sary is one of five senior leaders scheduled to be tried for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed 1.7 million people by torture, execution, overwork and starvation during its 1975 to 1979 rule.
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