Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Fri, 4 Sep 1992 11:19:33 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      CAM: Khmer Rouge airs call for UNTAC head resignation

09/03

KHMER ROUGE AIRS CALL FOR UNTAC HEAD RESIGNATION

    By Kevin Cooney
    BANGKOK, Sept 3, Reuters - The radio station of the radical Khmer Rouge
guerrilla group on Thursday broadcast a call for the resignation of the chief
U.N. peacekeeper in Cambodia saying the Japanese diplomat was acting in Japan's
economic interests.
    The radio station is the official voice of the Khmer Rouge and carries only
propaganda approved by the leadership of the shadowy Maoist organisation.
    It quoted a petition it said was sent to U.N. headquarters in New York by a
group of Cambodians in Canada.
    "We have followed the activities of the U.N. Secretary General's special
representative, Yasushi Akashi," the broadcast quoted the group as saying.
    "We would like to point out that Akashi lacks common sense, courage,
far-sightedness and the political will to perform the task the United Nations
have entrusted to him."
    The broadcast was monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation and a
text was made available in Bangkok.
    "If no urgent measures are taken," the Khmer Rouge quoted the petition as
saying, "the current situation in Cambodia will develop into a tragedy.
    "In view of this we demand that Akashi should resign as the special
representative of the U.N. Secretary general and UNTAC (U.N. Transitional
Authority in Cambodia) head."
    The broadcast gave no details about the Canadian group other than to say its
name was the Committee for the Protection of Cambodian Democracy and that it was
set up last month.
    Akashi has found himself in growing conflict with Khmer Rouge President
Khieu Samphan since the radicals, who put Cambodia through a reign of terror in
the 1970s that killed a million people, have balked at entering the disarmament
phase of the U.N.-brokered peace agreement they signed last October.
    The Khmer Rouge says the Vietnamese army, which ousted it in 1979, is still
active in Cambodia.
    Akashi has said the Khmer Rouge has offered no evidence of this and foreign
diplomats based in Phnom Penh largely accept Hanoi's position that it withdrew
the last of its troops in September, 1989.
    Akashi castigated the Khmer Rouge earlier this week for consistently
referring to Vietnamese as "yuon," meaning savages, in its radio broadcasts.
    Khieu Samphan, who diplomats believe still reports to "Brother Number One"
Pol Pot, says that ethnic Vietnamese settlers in Cambodia are part of a Hanoi
plot to colonise its smaller neighbour.
    The petition read on Khmer Rouge radio on Thursday said Akashi was allowing
Vietnamese settlers to take part in the elections, scheduled for next May, and
that this was tantamount to forcing the Cambodian people to "accept peace at
gunpoint."
    "We believe Akashi's goal is to sacrifice the Cambodian people for the
economic interests of Japan, which wants to have the markets of the Vietnamese
expansionists," it said.
    Akashi promulgated an election law last month that disenfranchised recent
settlers.
    Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese families live in Cambodia, many
for generations.
    Enmity between the two peoples goes back hundreds of years to when the
Vietnamese drove Cambodians out of what is now southern Vietnam.
    Eight Vietnamese, including a newborn baby, were killed in a pogrom in
southern Cambodia in July. A preliminary UNTAC investigation of the incident
said the Khmer Rouge might have been responsible.
    On July 23, Akashi accused the Khmer Rouge of a "deliberate policy of
terror" because of continuing ceasefire violations.
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