Cambodia premier warns politicos against land grabbing

Phnom Penh - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen criticized his party members for land grabbing during an internal meeting of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), according to a statement received Sunday.

The statement and sources close to the ruling party said Hun Sen had warned the senior CPP members to desist from land grabbing and other abuses of power.

He also removed the former governor of north-eastern Ratanakiri province, Kham Khoeun, from the party's central committee. Khoeun was recently sentenced in absentia to 17 years in prison by a Cambodian court for his conviction of involvement in a 2004 illegal logging scandal in a protected area of the province.

Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, a former Khmer Rouge cadre member who defected to Vietnam and returned as a member of the nucleus that overthrew that regime in 1979, was promoted to become a party Permanent Committee member at the same meeting, the statement said, as was Constitutional Council president Bin Chhin.

Chhin led a recent delegation to neighbouring Vietnam aimed at building Cambodian government expertise in clarifying legal documents such as land titles, solving election disputes and fighting government corruption.

The 30-member Permanent Committee is pivotal in formulating party policy.

CPP sources said Hun Sen has grown increasingly impatient with party members who abuse their positions to take land from poor rural villagers and that at least one senior military official has already been forced to give land back to the government.

Donors, rights workers and political analysts have warned that if the problem is not solved, it could disenfranchise CPP supporters in the party's heartland rural areas and eventually lead to political instability. Donors have threatened to withold funds to the aid-dependent nation if endemic corruption is not curbed through legislation.

The Central Committee meeting, held Saturday, came less than a month before vital national commune elections scheduled for April 1.