Amidst the controversy over the South China Sea that dominated last
week’s ASEAN summit, Cambodia managed to at least partially deflect negative
attention by negotiating the redeployment of troops from Preah Vihear.
In the most significant
development on the disputed territory since the UN’s highest court ordered
Cambodia and Thailand to withdraw troops from a Provisional Demiliatrised Zone
last year, the government announced the mutual redeployment on Friday.
Both countries are now set to
withdraw troops on July 18, exactly one year after the International Court of
Justice ordered them to do so “immediately”.
Prime Minister Hun Sen announced
on Friday that after meeting with his Thai counterpart, Yingluck Shinawatra, an
in-principle agreement had been struck to redeploy troops from the 17.3-kilometre
PDZ.
“I would like to stress that this
issue [shows] the willingness of both parties to create a calm atmosphere that
will benefit both sides,” he said. “The redeployment of troop does not mean
withdrawing troops from individual country, but redeployment and replacement by
police forces.”
The Cambodian government
explained that redeployment on Saturday, saying it had agreed to move 485
troops from the PDZ and replace them with 255 police officers and 100 guards.
“This is the first step of
redeployment [of] armed group from the area around Preah Vihear temple, which
are Dragon Stair market, North Ancient Stair, East Ancient Stair and Keo Sikha
Kiri Svarak pagoda,” a government press released stated.
Defence Minister Tea Banh told
reporters outside the meeting in Siem Reap province that “the troop
redeployment can be made without the presence of the Indonesian observers”, who
are supposed to independently monitor the process.
Yingluck Shinawatra said that no
matter how much trade prospered in the ASEAN, people need to be able to travel
safely, free of conflict.
“So it is important that we and
ASEAN grow together and sustain peace,” she said.
In February and April last year,
fatal clashes erupted between Cambodian and Thai troops over the temple,
displacing thousands.
Thai foreign affairs spokesman
Thani Thongpakdee confirmed yesterday that his country would also redeploy
troops, but could not provide specific numbers.
“My understanding is the defence
minister will be meeting with the armed forces early this week to work out the
details of the redeployment on the Thai troops,” he said.
Both countries lay claim to a
4.6-square-kilometre patch of territory surrounding the 11th-century temple,
which was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 2008.
The agreement comes after a week
in which Cambodia, as hosts of the ASEAN Regional Forum, has come under intense
scrutiny for the failure of the 10 member states to put out a joint communiqué,
after finding themselves at loggerheads over the South China Sea issue.
Cambodia has been accused of
actively obstructing efforts to negotiate the joint communiqué and a binding
Code of Conduct on how to resolve disputes in the oil-rich South China Sea,
benefiting the interests of its allies in Beijing.
Citing an anonymous diplomat, The
New York Times reported on Thursday that Cambodian foreign minister Hor Namhong
had walked out of last-minute negotiations to sign off on a watered down
version of the communiqué.
“China bought the chair, simple
as that,” the diplomat told the newspaper.
A war of words erupted between
Cambodia and the Philippines on Friday, with the latter accusing the current
ASEAN chair of obstructing their efforts to include the Scarborough Shoal
islands, which they have a territorial dispute with China over, in the
communiqué.
Cambodia fired back at the
Philippines, with Hor Namhong telling a press conference on Friday that the
joint communiqué had been taken “hostage” by countries seeking to include a
reference to the islands.
“Some countries still kept
insisting on putting in the Scarborough Shoal issue, which is a bilateral
dispute between the Philippines and China,” he said, adding that as a matter of
principle, Cambodia did not intervene in bilateral disputes between member
countries.
Though the summit failed to yield
a joint communiqué for the first time in its 45-year history, key elements of
the CoC were negotiated, a more binding progression of a Declaration of Conduct
signed by ASEAN and China in 2002.
An unofficial outline of the CoC
suggests the 10 member countries agreed that if mediation failed, disputes
could be resolved through international law.
That includes adhering to the UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea, which does not, however, apply to sovereignty
claims over Scarborough Shoal.
It also compels signatories to
respect and adhere to the Treaty of Amenity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia
which establishes an ASEAN High Council to mediate disputes and was ratified by
China in 2003.
But rather than a multilateral
approach, China favours bilateral negotiations with each individual claimant,
which in ASEAN includes the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
Carlyle Thayer, an emeritus
professor at the University of New South Wales, said the Preah Vihear agreement
would only partially heal the bad image Cambodia had attracted from its conduct
during the summit.
“The subtext of that message is:
We have a dispute, we settled it ourselves and we didn’t need outsiders,” he
said, but noted the agreement followed a ruling of an international court.
But Thayer said that for at least
the next six months, the Philippines was unlikely to trust Cambodia, which had
threatened to walk out of meetings last week practically every time they tried
to assert their position on the South China Sea.
Cheang Sokha and David Boyle
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