Cambodian premier: Opposition leader won't run in next election

Phnom Penh - Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen said the leader of the country's main opposition party would not be permitted to participate in the next general election unless he serves a pending jail sentence, local media reported Thursday.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy is currently in France after being sentenced in January to two years in absentia for his role in uprooting controversial boundary posts on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia.

'This time the court sentenced him to jail - no pardon this time,' Hun Sen was reported as saying by the Phnom Penh Post newspaper. 'In the next election [due in 2013] there will be opposition parties, but this person will not be there.'

'You must be jailed first, if you are brave enough to come and be jailed,' he added.

Sam Rainsy told the German Press Agency dpa in late January that he was prepared to return and serve time provided the government freed two villagers locked up over same incident.

He said the government must also return land that farmers in the border area said they had lost in an ongoing border-marking effort between the two nations.

Both Hun Sen and Sam Rainsy have accused each other of betraying Cambodia in the border row.

The border-post incident, which took place in October, riled Hanoi which has close links to the government in Phnom Penh.

Vietnam has significant business interests in Cambodia, including investments

in agribusiness, aviation, telecommunications and banking.

In December, Hanoi signed an agreement with Phnom Penh that could result in investments worth billions of US dollars, including a deal to look for aluminium ore, known as bauxite, in Cambodia's border province of Mondolkiri.