Thai and Cambodian troops clashed with heavy artillery for a sixth day yesterday near two disputed 12th-century Hindu temples, the Cambodian defense ministry said following a night of shelling that killed a Thai villager.
Talks between Thai and Cambodian defense ministers to end Southeast Asia’s bloodiest border dispute in years were abruptly canceled, dashing hopes of an imminent end to fighting that has killed at least 14 people and sent more than 50,000 into evacuation centers.
Thai Minister of Defence Prawit Wongsuwon had been expected to meet his Cambodian counterpart, Tea Banh, in Phnom Penh, but he instead was flying to China for previously scheduled meetings.
“We welcome talks, but only if Cambodia stops the shooting first,” Royal Thai Army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva took a more conciliatory approach, saying talks between defense ministers have merely been “rescheduled.”
Many experts say the fighting over territory and sovereignty is fueled by political interests, as each government seeks to discredit the other by appealing to nationalists at home, especially as Thailand prepares for an election due by July.
A change in government could be in Cambodia’s interests.
Analysts said the Thai military could also be flexing its muscles to preserve its sizeable stake in Thailand’s political apparatus and to satisfy conservative elites at odds with the country’s powerful opposition forces.
“The two countries appear to be calling for different kinds of talks. Cambodia is calling for ceasefire talks, which Thailand says are pointless,” said Surachart Bumrungsuk, a security expert at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Those differences are posing a major test for ASEAN, a 10-member bloc with ambitions to become a regional community by 2015 and a viable counterweight to China’s growing clout.
It is also a potential embarrassment for Indonesia, whose foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, had brokered the UN-backed ceasefire pact in February that would have placed unarmed Indonesian -military observers along the disputed border.
The Thai army objected and the deal never went through.
Thailand’s foreign minister was scheduled to meet with Natalegawa yesterday in Jakarta.
The latest fighting began early in the morning with heavy artillery near the Ta Moan and Ta Krabey temples, Cambodia’s defense ministry said.
Sovereignty over the ancient, stone-walled Hindu temples — Preah Vihear, Ta Moan and Ta Krabey — and the jungle of the Dangrek Mountains surrounding them has been in dispute since the withdrawal of the French from Cambodia in the 1950s.
“We are moving people further away from the border because Cambodia is using longer-range weapons,” Surin Province Deputy Governor Yutthana Viriyakitti said.
Before Friday last week, Cambodian and Thai soldiers jointly patrolled the area largely without incident. Villagers on both sides, many of whom share the same ethnic makeup, would mingle each day.
“We are neighbors and people here want to live in peace,” said a Thai villager who identified herself as Samorn. “I don’t understand why talks aren’t working.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema