Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 10:47:25 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Anti-Vietnamese guerrillas to come in from cold
X-To:         FISHLM%SNYBUFVA@pucc.princeton.edu, scv@media.mit.edu,
              seasia-l@msu.BITNET, vietnam@cco.caltech.edu, vn-news@saigon.com

09/01

ANTI-VIETNAMESE GUERRILLAS TO COME IN FROM COLD

    By Mark Dodd
    PHNOM PENH, Sept 1, Reuter - An anti-Vietnamese insurgent force lost for
years in the mountains of northeast Cambodia after the CIA abandoned it has
sought refugee status in a meeting with United Nations peacekeepers, a U.N.
spokesman said on Tuesday.
    The 407-strong group of about 200 fighters and their families is part of the
United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races (FULRO) opposing the Hanoi
government. Most of its members are Montagnard tribesmen.
    "They have forwarded to us a request to be considered for refugee status
somewhere in France or preferably the United States where other members of FULRO
are presently living," said Eric Falt, spokesman for the U.N. Transitional
Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) .
    The group was discovered in a remote corner of Mondulkiri Province which
borders Vietnam. UNTAC, which is supervising Cambodia's transition to peace
after more than two decades of civil war and turmoil, had known about their
presence for several months, Falt said.
    At least 300 of them were suffering from tropical ailments including malaria
and severe diarrhoea.
    "They are as much in need of medical assistance as they might be of asylum,"
Falt said.
    "They have been in the country for a number of years and the group was
originally supported by the United States," he said of the secretive guerrilla
force.
    "They claim there is no other place for them to be."
    Falt said the FULRO force certainly would not be welcome in Vietnam and did
not seem to be on friendly terms with armed forces in Cambodia.
    Contact with the nomadic guerrilla force was recently made by Uruguayan
soldiers attached to UNTAC.
    FULRO gained prominence during the Vietnam War when both Hanoi and the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency courted the loyalty of Montagnard tribesmen
operating along Vietnam's rugged central highlands extending into the northeast
corner of Cambodia.
    From the early 1960s to the end of the war in 1975 the pro-CIA Montagnards
were recruited as mercenaries and supervised by U.S. Special Forces for
behind-the-lines operations along the Ho Chi Minh trail.
    Their missions included gathering intelligence along the trail and
interdicting North Vietnamese supply columns moving south into the so-called
Parrot's Beak region in Vietnam's Tay Ninh Province.
    In his book "Brother Enemy" author Nayan Chanda writes: "In 1977 Vietnam's
security was threatened by increasingly bold attacks by the Khmer Rouge as well
as sputtering resistance from the tribal organisation FULRO and other
anti-communist groups."
    In that same year, he says, "Hanoi faced armed resistance from different
groups, at least one of which, FULRO, received material support from the Khmer
Rouge."
    The Khmer Rouge is one of three Cambodian guerrilla groups which fought
against the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh until a peace accord
signed in Paris last October.
    Falt said the FULRO force was currently grouped together about 25 km (15
miles) from the Vietnam-Cambodian border.
    "They are a small group, they are armed, primarily for self-defence and they
have not been active for many years," he said.
    The FULRO force contained several ageing fighters who had been with the
French colonial army in the 1950s.
    "This is a group that is unwanted basically anywhere," he said.
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