Cambodia welcomes Thai boycott of certain commercial exchange

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Commerce Minister ChamPrasidh on Sunday welcomed the Thai government's recent decision to stop its fruit export to Cambodia and cancel its annual product exhibition in the kingdom.

"Cambodia will not be affected" by this decision, he told Xinhua at the airport while receiving a senior Kuwaiti delegation.

It is a good thing that they stop fruit export and cancel product exhibition, because some Cambodians would become angry and destroy those products on show if they didn't do so, he said.

"It could make turmoil," he said, adding that the 20-day-long military standoff between the two countries at the border area has made the Cambodian people reluctant to buy Thai products.

Dispute over the ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple in the eponymous Cambodian province and the land around it has propelled both sides to station over a thousand troops at the border area since July 15. All diplomatic efforts have failed so far to retrieve the situation.

Trade volume between Cambodia and Thailand stood at 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2007, a 10.56 percent increase over 2006, according to the figures released by the Cambodian Commerce Ministry in March this year.