Southeast Asian leaders were headed for Cambodia yesterday to pay their respects to the country’s late former king, who had navigated the kingdom through six turbulent decades.
The prime ministers of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos are scheduled to visit the royal palace, where revered ex-monarch Norodom Sihanouk is lying in state after his body was brought home on Wednesday to a sea of hundreds of thousands of mourners.
They are to be the first foreign leaders to pay their condolences at the palace.
Photo: AFP
The charismatic royal, known affectionately by his people as the “King-Father,” died of a heart attack in Beijing on Monday aged 89.
The visiting dignitaries are to be greeted by members of the royal family who will take them to the Throne Hall to see the body, according to Sihanouk’s long-time personal assistant, Prince Sisowath Thomico.
“All the children of the King-Father have been asked to help out with receiving delegations from abroad,” he said.
Sihanouk, who towered over Cambodia through decades marked by independence from France, civil war, the murderous Khmer Rouge regime and finally peace, remained hugely popular even after abdicating in favor of his son in 2004 citing old age and ill health.
He will lie in state for the next three months ahead of an elaborate cremation ceremony.
It is not yet known when members of the public will be invited to visit Sihanouk’s body.
Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said the high-ranking visits from neighboring nations showed that Southeast Asian nations were “one family.”
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is expected to be granted an audience with Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni during a one-day visit, her deputy, Yutthasak Sasiprapa, said in Bangkok.
He said the Thai premier had personally called her Cambodian counterpart to smooth ruffled feathers after a Thai TV reporter was pictured standing with her feet near photographs of Sihanouk placed on the ground.
The images spread like wildfire online and upset some Cambodians, prompting an immediate apology from the journalist and her station.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate