Miss Street-Porter, I have a job for you in Cambodia

By Jeremy Clarkson

Since we’re told charity begins at home, it’s better, I’ve always thought, to give £1m to a hapless British person than 10p to an organisation that provides sandwiches for prisoners in Turkey. Now, however, I have decided that, actually, charity begins in Cambodia.

Some people get all dewy-eyed about Africa. That’s jolly noble, but I don’t see the point because I fear that no matter how much money you pump in, the bejewelled pigs that run the place will pump it straight back out again, into the coffers of Kalashnikov and Mercedes-Benz. The only thing I’d send to the dark continent is a team of SAS hitmen to shoot the likes of Mr Mugabe in the middle of his face.

Others would say that we have enough problems on our own shores without getting all teary over the children of Mr Pot. I disagree, because these days, every time I think of underprivileged people in Britain, the hideous face of Shannon Matthews’s mum pops into my head, all greasy, fat and stupid, and it’s hard to summon up any sympathy at all.

Cambodia, though, is different. It’s a country of 14m people but between them they have only about 5m legs. In fact, there are 25,000 amputees, the highest ratio per capita of any country in the world. This is not because Cambodians are especially clumsy. It is because of landmines.

Nobody knows how many mines were laid during the endless cycle of warfare, but it’s sure to be in the millions. What we do know is that since the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and drove the madman Pol Pot into the hills, 63,000 people have trodden on one.

One man has had his left leg blown off four times. They gave him a good prosthetic after the first and second explosions, but since then he’s had to make his own out of wood.

And it’s still going on today. In most places in the world, you can get three rice harvests per year from your paddy field. In Cambodia, it’s one. This is partly because the Khmer like a weird sort of rice that’s harder to grow, but mostly it’s because you set off with your plough and within minutes there’s a big bang and your water buffalo has become a crimson mist.

As a result of the ordnance lying in every field, no one is fighting for a right to roam in Cambodia. They have no equivalent of the Ramblers Association. They have no concept of Janet Street-Porter. In fact they have no concept of England.

Because the education is so poor, most people there believe the world is made up of four countries: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Everywhere else is France. All white people are therefore French. Angelina Jolie, who adopted a Cambodian baby, does much to help clear the landmines and has been made a Cambodian citizen, is French. I was French. And every night, most of the men settle down to watch Manchester United and Chelsea slug it out for honours in the French Premier League.

I’d never met an adult anywhere in the world (apart from America) who’d never heard of Great Britain. In Cambodia nobody had.

What’s more, you will never see a Cambodian person wearing sunglasses. Mainly this is because the average wage in Cambodia is less than £400 a year and so Ray-Bans are a bit out of range. But also it’s because Cambodians all have flat noses. So sunglasses simply fall onto the floor every time you hop to the shops, and every time your buffalo explodes.

That’s what did it for me. The sunglasses.

Not the education. Not the notion of living in a country where there is no Janet Street-Porter. The landmines made my eyes prickle, but my heart just mushroomed over the idea that they can’t afford to wear shades. And that even if they could, they’d keep falling off.

I have therefore decided that I must do something. Unfortunately, however, we all reach a point like this when we decide we must help, and then it’s so very hard to know what should be done next.

Secretly we all know that for every pound we donate to a large charity, only 2p actually reaches the people we have in mind. The rest is spent on adverts for highly paid co-ordinators in The Guardian and expensive offices in London’s glittering West End.

You always feel you want to go to the root of the problem. But in the bee that’s come to nest in my roost, that’ll be hard. Earlier this summer a team of Australian doctors happened upon a little girl in the town of Siem Reap. Her face had been horribly disfigured, by a bloody landmine I suppose, and they were overwhelmed with a need to help.

They went to meet her parents, and her father was keen that his daughter be sent to Australia for plastic surgery. Her mother, however, went ballistic when she discovered the poor child would once again look normal. “How will she be able to beg then?” she asked. And the Aussie medics were sent packing.

I can’t even ring the Cambodian government for help because I fear it would be extremely enthusiastic and then all the money I sent over would be spent on fixtures and fittings in the finance minister’s next luxury hotel. That’s if I could raise any money in the first place. It’s hard when money’s tight here and everyone else has their own pet project.

I suppose I could write to Ray-Ban asking it to design a cheap pair of shades that can be worn by someone who has no nose. But I think it’d be better if I started work on some designs for the most brilliant mine-clearing vehicle the world has ever seen. I’m thinking of strapping some ramblers together, and then . . . Read more!

US Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte arrives in Cambodia

Phnom Penh - US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte flew into the northern Cambodian tourist hub of Siem Reap in a relaxed start to his three-day official visit, touring the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, local officials said on Sunday.

Negroponte arrived in Cambodia from neighbouring Vietnam for a visit which will include meetings with Prime Minister Hun Sen and an array of ministers including Foreign Minister Hor Namhong.

He is scheduled to sign a 24-million-dollar agreement on Monday to assist economic development in the country and will hold a press conference on Tuesday morning before flying out, according to a schedule from the US embassy.

At Angkor Wat, Negroponte toured the 12th century World Heritage- listed temples, which are also the nation's largest tourism draw, 300 kilometres from the capital, and he is expected to arrive in Phnom Penh early on Monday morning, officials said.

Ties between the US and Cambodia have warmed considerably in recent years, with the US providing support for the nation's armed forces as well as recently agreeing to give aid directly to the government, rather than through other agencies.

Cambodia has also been praised by the US for its help in fighting terrorism and its assistance in helping locate the remains of US soldiers missing in action, mostly from the Vietnam War era.

Read more!

Cambodia ready to wait as Thai crisis delays talks

PHNOM PENH (dpa) - Cambodia is content to wait for as long as it takes Thailand to settle its political upheavals and resume talks over disputed border territory, its government said Thursday.
Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said by telephone that it was the least Cambodia could do to give Thailand breathing room to get its internal affairs in order.

"The dispute over the border has been around 100 years," Kanharith said. "A few more weeks can't hurt."

Cambodia closed the border at the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on its northern border in June. On July 7 Unesco declared the temple a World Heritage Site over Thai objections, and a week later, Thai troops moved into nearby areas that it said are disputed but that Cambodia said is its territory.

Cambodia claimed Thai troops also moved into the Moan temple complex 150 km to the west soon after - claims Thailand denied, saying it has had a troop presence near there for years.

Several rounds of talks have failed to resolve the deadlock with both sides vowing not to back down. Further talks are now on hold.

Thailand's Constitution Court on Tuesday found embattled Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej guilty of violating the national charter for hosting a television cooking show after he assumed office on February 6, forcing him out of his job.

Although the court's ruling immediately deprived Samak of the premiership, the constitution allows him to return to the post if members of parliament vote him back into power.
Read more!

Cambodia: US Warship Gives Rare Tour To Cambodian Officials

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA: Cambodian government and military officials took a rare tour of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier when it sailed through the region on its way home from Iraq, embassy officials said Thursday (11 Sept).

It was the first tour by Cambodian officials of a U.S. aircraft carrier and "another step in the growing military to military relationship" between the two countries, said embassy spokesman John Johnson.

The Cambodian delegation was flown by a U.S. military aircraft from the capital, Phnom Penh, for a four-hour visit Wednesday (10 Sept) on the vessel, which was about 250 miles off the Cambodian coast, Johnson said.

Cambodia's army commander, Gen. Meas Sophea, called the tour "a very special occasion," in a prepared statement.

Mao Has Vannal, head of Cambodian's civil aviation authority, said he'd only seen such military capabilities on television.

"On the return flight, we took off under the force of the catapult system shooting the plane up into the air," he said Thursday. "It was so real compared to what we used to see on the Discovery Channel."

The tour was the latest sign of growing relations between the two countries.

In February, the USS Gary, a guided missile frigate with 200 officers and crew, was the first American military vessel to dock at a Cambodian seaport in more than 30 years.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military heavily bombed suspected communist guerrilla strongholds in Cambodia.

The U.S. backed Cambodia's 1970s military regime led by General Lon Nol until it was toppled by Khmer Rouge rebels. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed fighting Khmer Rouge forces on Koh Tang, a Cambodian island in the Gulf of Thailand, in May 1975. (AP)

Read more!

Thai soldiers claim another Cambodian temple, military says

Written by Thet Sambath

Thai soldiers have moved into Ta Krabey temple, but military commanders say negotiation will be used to solve the problem

MORE than 100 Thai soldiers seized control of the Kingdom's Ta Krabey temple Wednesday evening and are refusing to leave, despite the best efforts of some 50 Cambodian soldiers who remain at the site, military commanders stationed at the border said.

Ho Bunthy, deputy commander of Border Military Unit 402, said that Cambodian soldiers - who have controlled the small temple for years - tried to defend the site by shooting in the air but that the Thai soldiers still marched in.

"They dared to enter because they know Cambodian soldiers got the orders not to use violence and shoot," Ho Bunthy said.

The Wednesday night incursion involved around 100 Thai soldiers who had previously tried to prevent Cambodian troops from accessing the temple by cutting down trees and using them to block the entry road.

"Thai soldiers cut trees down on the road around 13 kilometres away from Ta Krabey temple on Wednesday afternoon to prevent our armed forces from walking to this temple and help them to send their troops to enter the temple in the evening," Ho Bunthy said.

Ho Bunthy said that before the Thai soldiers entered the temple he ordered 50 Cambodian soldiers to stand in a "fence" formation to try to prevent them from entering but to no avail, adding that the Thais had been eyeing the temple for days.

Negotiations again
Chea Morn, commander of Military Region 4, said that military commanders on both sides are trying to solve the problem through negotiation. "We are standing at the temple together now and we will negotiate with Thai military commanders later on," he said.


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It is a big problem when two countries are at war. we are trying to avoid it.

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"If we tried to prevent the Thai soldiers from entering the temple, there would be a clash between the two sides so we will let the border committee demarcate first," Chea Morn said.

"It is a big problem when two countries are at war. We are trying to avoid it," he added.

San Vanna, deputy governor of Oddar Meanchey province, said that he has been informed about the Thai soldiers occupying the Ta Krabey temple. "It saddens me to hear about this. The Thai soldiers shouldn't have entered the temple."

Yim Sovann, opposition Sam Rainsy Party's parliamentarian, criticised the government for taking a weak stance against Thailand.

"It is embarrassing that our government is too weak to defend our nation," he said. Read more!

Cambodia Allows Hijab at Schools

CAIRO — Cambodian Muslim students will be allowed to wear Islamic attire, including hijab, as of the new academic year in October, reported the Phnom Penh Post daily on Friday, September 12.

"While students are supposed to wear white shirts and blue trousers to school, Khmer Muslim students will be allowed to wear traditional uniforms to school because we are open minded about students believing in different religions," said Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth Chey Chap.

Prime Minister Hun Sen pledged two months ago to allow Muslim students to wear their Islamic attire at schools.

The decision will be effective when the new academic year starts in October.

Previously, Muslim students, both boys and girls, had to abide by a standard uniform determined by their schools, usually comprises a shirt and a pair of trousers.

This had forced many Muslim students, particularly girls, to abandon their studies.

Some schools were bending the rules to allow female Muslim students to don headgear.

"At the moment Khmer Muslim students don't wear their traditional clothes at school, but they still wear folded scarves around their faces," said Dy Tep Kosal, the director of Chea Sim Cham Reun Roth Secondary School, where Muslims make up nearly 40 percent of its students.

Hijab is an obligatory code of dress for Muslim women.

Inclusive

The government decision drew cheering from Cambodian Muslims.

"This shows that the government doesn't want to discriminate against Muslim students and will show people that there are a lot of Khmer Muslims within the education system," said Zakaryya Adam, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Cults and Religion.

Abdulhalim Kasim, a Muslim student at Norton University, said the decision comes in the right time for female Muslim students.

"While it doesn't make any difference to me because I am a man and can wear whatever Khmer students wear, girls need to wear scarves over their faces," he said.

Kasim said the decision also has broader implications.

"The fact that the government will allow us to wear our traditional clothes means it accepts all religions [and] it will make it easier for Khmer Muslims to study."

There are estimated 700,000 Muslims in Cambodia, making up 5 percent of the country's 13 million population.

Cambodian Muslims are generally located in towns and rural fishing villages on the banks of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers and in Kampot Province in the south.

Read more!

Cambodia patient over Thailand's turmoil and temple talk delays

Phnom Penh - Cambodia is content to wait for as long as it takes Thailand to settle its political upheavals and resume talks over disputed border territory, its government said Thursday. Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said by telephone that it was the least Cambodia could do to give Thailand breathing room to get its internal affairs in order.

"The dispute over the border has been around 100 years," Kanharith said. "A few more weeks can't hurt."

Cambodia closed the border at the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on its northern border in June. On July 7 UNESCO declared the temple a World Heritage Site over Thai objections, and a week later, Thai troops moved into nearby areas that it said are disputed but that Cambodia said is its territory.

Cambodia claimed Thai troops also moved into the Moan temple complex 150 kilometres to the west soon after - claims Thailand denied, saying it has had a troop presence near there for years.
Several rounds of talks have failed to resolve the deadlock with both sides vowing not to back down. Further talks are now on hold.

Thailand's Constitution Court on Tuesday found embattled Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej guilty of violating the national charter for hosting a television cooking show after he assumed office on February 6, forcing him out of his job.

Although the court's ruling immediately deprived Samak of the premiership, the constitution allows him to return to the post if members of parliament vote him back into power.
Read more!

Gina is heading to Cambodia to teach children

By Julie Armstrong

A FORMER pupil of William Howard School in Brampton is to give up three months to teach deprived children in south-east Asia.

Gina Williamson, 18, was inspired by a school trip to Tanzania where she admired the communal and eco-friendly lifestyle.

Next week she will set off for Cambodia where she will be teaching under-10s with volunteer company Bunac.

Many children there come from such poor families they have to stay at home to work during the day.

Bunac gives them the opportunity of a free education, providing classes in the evenings to make them more accessible.

Gina, who has just gained three Bs and a C at A-level, said: “I went to Tanzania with William Howard in July. That was my first experience of a Third World country – a real eye-opener.

“I loved everything about it. The people were really friendly and so generous even though they have so little.

“They’re really proud of their country and there’s a real sense of community. All their food is local and organic, grown in their gardens. Everything is in tune with the environment. I’d like to live in a commune over there.

“It made me feel I should be doing something worthwhile, giving something back to people who are less fortunate. I’ve done a 60-hour TEFL course online and I leave on Tuesday. I’ve never been to Asia and wanted to go somewhere different.”

Gina, of Cherry Lane, Parkland Village, Carlisle, will live in Siem Reap, a large town about eight hours north of the capital Phnom Penh, and will visit the famous Ankor Wat – a 12th-century Buddhist temple which appears on Cambodia’s national flag.

She has paid £30 towards a sustainable forest project to offset the carbon emissions from her flight. She will share a house with other volunteers, whom she has not yet met.

“I am most scared about going on my own,” she said. “I think my phone bill will be huge because I could be homesick and lonely. I don’t know any of the other volunteers, but we’ll all have one thing in common – we all wanted to go to Cambodia.”

She will come back for Christmas but in January will be off on her travels again – this time to Canada to train to be a ski instructor. Read more!

Peace, prosperity revive dream of connecting Asia by rail

NONG KHAI, Thailand (AFP) - As Asia develops at a whirlwind pace and peace holds in once-warring nations, countries are reviving a decades-old dream of connecting the vast continent with a continuous railway.

Like the ancient Silk Road but made of sleepers and track, the route would ferry goods and tourists from Singapore to St Petersburg, Phnom Penh to Pyongyang, creating development wherever the carriages pull in.

The idea was born in 1960 but was stalled by decades of conflict and poverty across the region.

Then the break up of the Soviet Union and the opening up of China ushered in a new era for Asian railways, said Barry Cable, Bangkok-based transport and tourism director at United Nations regional economic body UNESCAP.

"Countries have started to explore the international benefits of the railways," he told AFP.

"If railways are really going to fulfill their potential the investment required is going to be substantial, but the benefits are going to be huge."

In November 2006, 18 Asian nations including China and Russia signed a formal agreement to integrate the continent into a single railway network.

The UN-backed Trans-Asian Railway route now has nearly 74,700 kilometres (464,164 miles) of functioning track, serving 29 countries stretching west to Turkey and Russia and east to Vietnam and South Korea.

There are still around 6,200 kilometres of missing links, and filling in those blanks will cost roughly 15 billion dollars, the UN estimated two years ago.

Although authoritarian regimes, political tensions and gaps in funding are preventing a completely smooth ride, countries across the region are taking steps toward completion of the railway.

In northeastern Thailand, a new track due to open in March 2009 runs over the Friendship Bridge spanning the Mekong river linking Thailand and Laos.

It's only about five kilometres long from Nong Khai town in Thailand to Tha Na Laeng just over the border, but it is the first track to be laid in Laos, opening up a vital rail route to the sea for the landlocked nation.

At Nong Khai's river port, a constant stream of burly men lug cartons of food and household goods onto boats, which will sail across the Mekong to Laos.

Ead Kitkla, a 46-year-old Thai trader, says his load of coconut milk, spices and seeds has to travel from Bangkok to Laos in three buses and a boat.

"The train will be more convenient to go to Vientiane. There will be no need to take many buses," he said. "It will save time."

But, he added, life will be even easier when the Laotian government extends the line another nine kilometres to the capital, a move still in the planning stages.

Many of the gaps in the railway are in Southeast Asia, with only Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand operating cross-border links.

Thailand and Cambodia are linked by a track that has fallen out of use. Civil war in Cambodia only ended in the 1990s, and trains there crawl along dilapidated tracks.

The Asian Development Bank has stepped in with funds to help overhaul the railways, a project expected to be finished within three years, says Touch Chan Kosal, undersecretary of Cambodia's transport ministry.

He says no agreement has been reached on reconnecting with Thailand, and the two countries are preoccupied with a border dispute which threatened to escalate into a military clash.

The UN thinks the link can be running in two years, sparking an interest in a connection to Vietnam -- which has two rail crossings to China -- thus sewing up most of Southeast Asia all the way to Russia.

Like any chain, it is only as strong as its weakest link, and there seems little hope of connecting Asia with military-ruled Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries.

Pierre Chartier, economic affairs officer for UNESCAP's transport division, said the Korean International Cooperation Agency financed a feasibility study on reconnecting the Thai-Myanmar link.

"The figures are not very good, economically speaking, in terms of traffic that could be expected to travel on this line, compared to the cost of putting the infrastructure in place," he says.

Cable said both the mountainous terrain and the isolationist regime in Myanmar are standing in the way of connecting Southeast Asia with India and on through Iran to Turkey.

"Under the present regime, no substantial progress will be made," he says.

But barriers once thought immovable have been broken -- North and South Korea, for instance, launched a cross-border freight train last December.

Another problem across Asia's sub-regions is the different railways gauges, the space between the tracks, but Cable says freight can simply be loaded from train to train.

He envisages dry ports, where goods will arrive and go through customs, creating bubbles of development, employment, trade and industry while cutting down the reliance on roads.

"We have to worry about energy and environment and about safety, and while we are all seeking new technologies and ways of reducing energy consumption, we have one technology already available to use, and that's railways," he says.

Tourists too will be keen to travel by train, he said, as they are increasingly aware of air travel's impact on climate change.

But improved transport links also give an easier ride to traffickers in women, children, drugs and wildlife -- all trades which have historically thrived in Southeast Asia and which governments are striving to wipe out.

Patchareeboon Sakulpitakphon, an programme officer from ECPAT, a group which works to end trafficking in children for sex, says pockets of development around rail terminals may also create pockets of vulnerability.

"People who are in poverty, they might see this railway as an opportunity to make an increased living, they might migrate to that area," she said.

"People involved in commercial sexual exploitation of children will know this might be a new area where vulnerable people might go."

To counter this, she said, authorities need to make sure communities around the railways are educated about the dangers of trafficking.

Cable said donor nations and financial institutions must make funding for railways conditional on programmes to address social woes, but said he believes the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks.

The UN sets a timeframe of 10 to 15 years for completion of the Trans-Asian Railway, which experts say is realistic if Asian nations maintain the political will.

"People are starting to rediscover their railways and saying what can we do to make them contribute more to economic development," says Chris Jackson, editor of British-based industry publication the Railway Gazette International.

"Tying up the loose ends and developing these international corridors is certainly part of it.

"If the railways can get their act together, there is potential to carry a lot of business in a fairly profitable way." Read more!

Jetstar to add Denpasar service in boost to hub

JETSTAR has moved to further bolster its new international hub in Darwin by adding a daily Brisbane-Darwin-Denpasar service from December 3.

The move will provide one-stop Airbus A320 flights from the three big east coast cities and complements existing non-stop A330 services from Sydney and Melbourne.

It sees frequencies between Brisbane and Darwin rise from six to 13 a week and brings to 69 the number of weekly domestic and international A320 services the low-cost carrier now operates out of the Northern Territory capital.

Jetstar spokesman Simon Westaway said the move would make Jetstar the strongest local carrier serving the Bali market from December.

Mr Westaway said the capacity was in addition to the six weekly A330 flights -- two from Melbourne and four from Sydney -- and said there was no intention of cancelling those services.

"This is part of our narrowbody strategy of developing Darwin as a legitimate domestic and international hub," he said. "Darwin gets a third Asian destination -- we link it directly with Singapore and since September we've been operating to Ho Chi Minh City as well."

The move is part of a broader plan to use A320 and A321 aircraft to service Southeast Asian destinations through Darwin and Perth. The strategy, hatched after delays to the airline's 15 Boeing 787s, also saw Jetstar pull A330 services out of Vietnam and Malaysia and redeploy them to protect slots in Japan.

Mr Westaway said the extra capacity was warranted, given the Bali market's significant growth.

He pointed to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures that show a 63 per cent jump in Australian visitors to the island last year and a 60 per cent rise this year.

The recovery comes after Australian tourism to the holiday island slumped in the wake of bombings by Islamic extremists. "It's all about having low fares and an efficient transition through Darwin International Airport and the incremental capacity, we think, is absolutely warranted on where we think the Bali market's now at," he said.

Mr Westaway said Perth was due to get an international boost late next month, with flights to Denpasar, Jakarta and Singapore.

He said this would be a first for the airline and would see Qantas move off the markets.

"We're looking at the opportunities that can emerge out of Perth, particularly as we move into 2009," he said. "But by December we'll have a number of international services running out of Perth with the first being October 27, which is the Perth to Denpasar service." The airline's wide-body growth depends on the delivery of its 787s. They are due in November next year but there has been speculation there could be further delays.

Mr Westaway said the airline had regular updates from Boeing and said its planning was still based around a first delivery in November next year. "As an organisation we're continuing to work towards that," he said. "Of course we're watching what's occurring in Seattle and with the Boeing organisation with a great deal of interest."

He said the carrier's short to medium-term growth would be generated by narrow-body deliveries. Jetstar currently has 29 A320s and two leased A321s.

New planes due in December, February and March will bring the A320 fleet to 32, completing an order of nine planes added to the original fleet of 23.

From mid-year, Jetstar will start taking planes from a bigger order of 68 firm aircraft, at least 17 will be bigger A321s.

Some of those planes will go to the Qantas Group's Vietnamese investment, Jetstar Pacific, which recently announced it would start international services under the brand later year.

The Vietnamese carrier said it would offer daily direct services to Bangkok from October 31 and Siem Reap, in Cambodia, from November 3.

It will initially use Boeing 737s before moving to the A320s.

Read more!

CAMBODIA: Landmine challenge to development

PHNOM PENH, 11 September 2008 (IRIN) - Landmine and explosive remnants of war (ERW) casualties in Cambodia fell to an all-time low of 351 in 2007, further evidence of the downward trend since the 1990s.

The post-conflict peak was 1996, when Cambodia suffered 4,320 landmine or ERW-related deaths and injuries, according to a government report.

But challenges remain.

An unknown number of villages - perhaps more than 40 percent nationwide - are vulnerable to landmines, the government said.

It tried to estimate the extent of contaminated land in 2002 but later judged its measurements poorly defined.

These problems, coupled with scarce land resources – partly due to widespread evictions and spiralling property prices – place additional importance on developing the newly available land after clearance, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

"Cambodia remains one of the most mine/ERW contaminated countries in the world and will require sustained external funding into the medium term to overcome it," Steve Munroe, UNDP mine action programme manager, told IRIN.

"By strengthening the mine-clearance process and making productive land available to the rural poor, UNDP's mine-clearance activities directly contribute to poverty reduction in Cambodia," he said.

According to the Cambodia Millennium Development Goals, eliminating the negative development impact of landmines, including limited arable land, is just as important as cutting the numbers of victims.

"In terms of the prioritisation of landmine clearance … they [mine action groups] must integrate their development and mine action programmes to address poverty," Heng Ratana, deputy director-general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) http://www.cmac.org.kh/publication_ar2005.asp, told IRIN.

Following up on mine-clearance projects with community-based education projects and checking on the efficient use of land after clearance remain priorities for mine-action NGOs.

Farming risks

Villagers often take extreme risks farming but have no choice given their impoverished circumstances, says UNDP.

However, Leang Sopheap, a farmer in the heavily mined northwest Battambang Province, is willing to take the risk. "I have to feed my family, and that's the most important thing," he told IRIN. "We can guess about landmines when we build farms, but we won't always be certain."

Despite a significant drop in casualties over the past six years, landmines and ERW continue to affect countless communities by limiting access to land that could be put to productive use, according to UNDP.

Focusing solely on the number of mines unearthed loses sight of the bigger development picture, says Herbert Feddon, senior project manager at BACTEC, in Cambodia, a commercial de-mining company.

"Problem is, the donors want to see more and more landmines cleared per hectare, but that's quite difficult with the fatigue the de-miners experience in Cambodia," he said.

Most objects found are random bits of metal debris, which, coupled with scorching heat, makes clearance particularly onerous, he explained. About 16 landmines were discovered per hectare of land in 2007, the government estimates.

"There's also the difficulty in measuring the number of landmines in Cambodia," he added. Estimates range from two to 10 million but he says around five million could be in the ballpark.

Bloody history

Bombings against Cambodia during the second world war and the subsequent French-Indochina war in the 1950s scattered the countryside - particularly at the Vietnam border - with ERWs.

From 1969 to 1973, the US dropped more than 500,000 MT of explosives during its carpet-bombing campaigns against the communists. The unexploded remnants of these bombs kill or injure more Cambodians annually than landmines, at 198 victims in 2007.

In 1967, the North Vietnamese army began laying landmines in Cambodia to protect its supply routes; mining intensified in 1970, when General Lon Nol mined the countryside against the Khmer Rouge communists.

Throughout the 1980s, the Thai military mined its border to defend against a possible spillover from the retreating Khmer Rouge, who had lost their hold on the capital. The Cambodian government and rebel forces also mined the country against each other throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The arrival of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) [see: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/untac.htm] in 1992, a peacekeeping mission, signalled the beginning of mine-action initiatives. Since then, Cambodia has signed the 1997 Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines and has destroyed its stockpiles of ordnance. Read more!

Cambodia faces new HIV threat as 'condom campaign at risk'

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Threats to a successful Cambodian condom campaign has raised fears the country could experience a second epidemic of the disease, health officials said Wednesday.

Tia Phalla, of Cambodia's National AIDS Authority, said the country's so-called 100 percent condom use programme, which provides sex education and distributes condoms to sex workers, "is facing difficulties" because of a new anti-sex trafficking law and lack of financial support.

Police began a crackdown on brothels after the new law was passed in February, which has reportedly forced prostitutes to leave condoms behind as they move from place to place.

"Enforcement of the anti-trafficking law harms the 100 percent condom use in brothels," Tia Phalla told a three-day national AIDS conference in Phnom Penh.

The percentage of sex workers who consistently used condoms with clients had already begun to drop to 94 percent in 2007 from 96 percent in 2003, according to AIDS authority data.

Additionally, only six of the country's 24 provinces and cities currently have funds to carry out the programme, Tia Phalla said.

"The main risk of a second wave of HIV infections occuring in Cambodia is from female sex workers, their clients and sweethearts," said a statement by the AIDS authority.

Before the 100 percent condom use programme began, Cambodia's overall HIV rate was the worst in the region, peaking at 3.7 percent of the population in 1997. Rates among prostitutes were estimated at 40 percent.

The aggressive condom and sex education campaign is believed to have helped drop Cambodia's overall HIV prevalence to 0.9 percent.
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Cambodia, U.S. to sign trade, agriculture, industry deal

PHNOM PENH, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia and the United States will sign a trade, agriculture and industry deal on Sept. 15 when the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte visits here on Sept. 14-16, a senior official said Wednesday.

Negroponte's visit will make the two countries move a step forward for bilateral ties, said Sok An, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Council of Ministers.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Negroponte will preside over the signing ceremony of a grant aid project for 24 million U.S. dollars in health sector, he said, adding that the fund of the health project will be operated by NGOs but monitored by the Cambodian government.

During his trip, Negroponte will meet with government officials, opposition leaders and representatives of Cambodia's civil society, a press release from the U.S. embassy said earlier this week.

As the centerpiece of the visit, the deputy secretary of state plans to meet with Hun Sen, it said.

Cambodia's apparel exports to the U.S. totaled 1.16 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of the year, up from 1.13 billion U.S. dollars in the same period of 2007, according to official statistics.
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Inflation driving Cambodia garment workers to quit

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Soaring inflation and stagnant wages have forced thousands of Cambodian garment factory workers to quit and look for better-paying jobs or return to the countryside, union leaders said Wednesday.

The development raises concerns about the future of the country's main dollar-earning industry.
"Their factory wages could no longer cope with rising food prices," said Chea Mony, president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, which had 80,000 members at the start of the year.

Since then, 27,000 have quit, he said. Many are now working in entertainment clubs such as karaoke parlors, where they can earn more than at their previous jobs, he said.

"Sometimes they collect $5 to $10 in tips per night from guests, and they work even fewer hours than when they were in the factories," Chea Mony said.

Others have returned to homes in the countryside, where living costs are lower.

In April, garment manufacturers raised wages by about US$6 to an average of US$50 a month.

But union leaders said the raise has done little to help the workers cope with the high costs of living in and around Phnom Penh, where most factories are located.

Consumer inflation in July rose to 22 percent in July, up from 18.7 percent in January, the last time the figure was released.

High food prices are adversely affecting Cambodia's poor, who spend approximately 70 percent of their total household consumption on food, according to a recent World Bank analysis.

Chhay Than, Cambodian Minister of Planing, said the July inflation rate was the highest recorded in 15 years and has been driven mainly by high price of oil.

The consumer rate remained at 22 percent for August, though that figure will be officially released only next week, said Khin Song, deputy director of the ministry's price index department.

Factories have been having difficulties trying to hire new labor to fill the empty slots in their assembly lines, said Chuon Mom Thol, president of the Cambodian Union Federation, another labor group.

The garment industry is the country's major export earner and employs about 350,000 workers, mostly women.

Kaing Monika, the external affairs manager of Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia, said the country's clothing exports in the first six months of this year were worth about US$1.35 billion, a 4 percent increase over the same period in 2007.

But the profit margin, calculated to have been around 2 percent, is becoming thinner or nearly nonexistent for most factories due to high production costs caused by skyrocketing oil prices and inflation, he said.

"The buyers did not pay higher prices, and the workers are demanding more wages because of the inflation that makes them really hard to cope with the current cost of living," he said.

He said the future of the industry "is getting very tough," adding that the competitive situation looks to tighten even more when U.S. measures, which have served as de facto limits on imports from trade rivals China and Vietnam, are lifted at the end of the year. Read more!

NCR Launches Next Generation Family of NCR SelfServ ATMs in Cambodia to Help Drive Banks' Revenue and Improve Consumer Satisfaction

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, September 10, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- - NCR SelfServ ATMs Helps Banks to Increase Revenue and Improve Customer Satisfaction

NCR Corporation (NCR:ncr corp new com

NCR 24.71, +0.35, +1.4%) http://www.ncr.com today announced the launch of its new NCR SelfServ(TM) family of automated teller machines (ATMs) in Cambodia. NCR SelfServ ATMs are designed to help drive more revenue by enabling easier introduction of multi-function services and ensuring higher ATM availability to customers, while reducing environmental impact.

ATM availability is one of the key priorities for banks in Southeast Asia, and the NCR SelfServ family with its "self-healing" capability addresses this need. This new ATM family recovers automatically from software failures without intervention, cutting down recovery time previously ranging from three to four hours, to just ten or fifteen minutes, therefore ensuring higher ATM availability.

Matthew Heap, NCR industry marketing director for Asia Pacific, said, "NCR is committed to the Cambodia market and the launch of NCR SelfServ today reinforces the same. The NCR SelfServ family reflects a key NCR strategy to link the consumer experience across the ATM, the Internet and mobility. Clearly, consumers want self-service banking to be convenient, easy to use, secure and always available when and where they want. As consumers do more through the ATM channel, it becomes imperative for financial institutions to ensure their ATM network is constantly up and running. NCR is committed to deliver the best in technology and services and will continue to innovate in changing the way consumers connect, interact and transact with businesses."

Over half of ATM downtime is due to low-level maintenance tasks - often performed by branch staff - such as replacing receipt rolls and clearing cards or paper jams. With intuitive interactive graphic operator panels, NCR SelfServ allows staff to fix more faults the first time and do so more quickly, leading to better availability. NCR SelfServ units include NCR's patented two-sided thermal (2ST(TM)) receipt printers that reduce the amount of paper consumed. Its larger paper rolls and dual receipt roll dispensers also include auto-change functionality.

The new NCR SelfServ family is designed to deliver the most advanced services, including bill payments and no-envelope intelligent cash and cheque deposits, while reducing environmental impact. NCR SelfServ is also the only ATM family to feature protected USB technology. This means that modules needed to deliver future services on ATMs can be added quickly, without compromising the security of the ATM. As 2D barcode technology emerges, bill payments and other transactions that use this technology can be handled on new modules available on NCR SelfServ. Technologies such as contactless card and mobile payment systems can also be easily integrated with NCR SelfServ ATMs to improve convenience for consumers and create revenue-generation opportunities for financial institutions and other ATM deployers.

China Banking Corporation is the first bank in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia to purchase the new ATMs, with an initial order of SelfServ units to fulfill its objectives of providing more convenient banking to its customers.

About NCR Corporation

NCR 24.71, +0.35, +1.4%) is a global technology company leading how the world connects, interacts and transacts with business. NCR's assisted- and self-service solutions and comprehensive support services address the needs of retail, financial, travel, healthcare, hospitality, gaming and public sector organizations in more than 100 countries. NCR ( http://www.ncr.com) is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio.

NCR is a trademark of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries.

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Cambodia's inflation hits record 22 percent

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia's inflation hit a record high of 22 percent in July, a government minister said Tuesday.

Planning Minister Chhay Than said high global prices of oil and food were to blame for the soaring rate.

"For July, the inflation rate was 22 percent. We can say that this is a record high," Chhay Than told AFP.

"The inflation is caused by outside factors... the prices of oil, fuel and foods... the slowdown in the US economy," he said.

"But if we compare with some neighbouring countries, it is not so high," Chhay Than added.

The last published consumer price index (CPI) for January showed that inflation had reached 18.7 percent.

The government then stopped releasing monthly CPI reports in a move widely seen as an effort to hide spiralling consumer costs ahead of July elections, in which Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling party stormed to victory.

Officials denied that claim, saying there had been a disagreement over how to calculate the figure.

The government has now said it will resume publication of inflation figures later this week.

Cambodia in May doubled reserve requirements for private banks from 8.0 percent to 16.0 percent in a bid to curb money supply and stem rising inflation. The requirements took effect from July.
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UN meets on helping poorest countries to boost industrial capacity

Officials from the UN and donor countries assembled in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, on Monday to discuss how to help the world's least developed countries (LDCs) to build up their capacity in the fields of trade and industrial development.

The two-day workshop that began Monday was organized by the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), in close collaboration with the World Trade Organization (WTO), a UN press release said.

It focuses on turning Aid-for-Trade (AFT), the WTO initiative which aims to scale up international financial assistance for building up trade capacity in developing countries, into concrete actions, specifically to boost industrial development in the LDCs.

While many LDCs have experienced high rates of growth in recent years, they still face many constraints which hinder their efforts to transform their economies and integrate into the global economy.

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss different areas of support provided by UNIDO, such as agribusiness and private sector development, as well as pilot programs in Benin, Cambodia, Rwanda and Yemen, among others.

Donors, UN agencies and financial institutions will be able to showcase their assistance to the LDCs. The outcome of the meeting will serve as input for the Conference of the Ministers of Industry from the LDCs, scheduled to be held in Siem Reap, Cambodia, in November.

Source:Xinhua
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Thailand's prime minister faces court showdown over cooking show

By Vijay Joshi, The Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand's prime minister, who has survived two weeks of militant street protests demanding his resignation, faces the possibility of being kicked out of office because of what he loves doing the most - cooking.

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a well-known foodie and a famous TV chef, defended himself in the Constitutional Court on Monday against accusations that he broke a prohibition on private employment while in office by hosting a television cooking show.

The court is expected to deliver its verdict Tuesday. If found guilty, he would have to resign, an outcome that would allow him to exit without succumbing to pressure from a radical group of protesters who have occupied the grounds of his office complex since Aug. 26, demanding he step down.

They accuse him of doing the bidding of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in 2006 by a military coup after demonstrations denouncing him for alleged corruption and abuse of power. The same protest coalition, the People's Alliance for Democracy, has led both the current protests and the ones in 2006.

"By making a quick decision, the court will help a lot in resolving the political crisis," said Suwat Apaipakdi, a lawyer for a group of senators who filed the petition against Samak in the case. "If the court rules that Prime Minister Samak is disqualified from holding office, then the political crisis will automatically cease."

But even if Samak is acquitted his troubles are not over - the Election Commission has recommended that his party be dissolved for vote fraud, and he faces a defamation suit and three possible corruption cases.

Samak's immediate problem, however, is his appearance on the popular cooking show "Tasting and Complaining," a mix of traditional Thai cooking and diatribes on the subjects of Samak's choice, which he hosted regularly before taking office in February.

He made about a half-dozen appearances on the show after becoming prime minister - the last time in May - prompting the senators to petition the Constitutional Court.

Article 267 of the Thai Constitution stipulates that the prime minister is prohibited from holding any position in any business venture.

In his hour-long testimony, Samak told the court that he only received an honorarium from the television company that made the show.

"I was hired to appear on the program and got paid from time to time. I was not an employee of the company so I did not violate the law," he said.

Samak, a cartoonist's delight because of his bulbous nose, told the court that the television company paid for his transportation.

"I presented the cooking show and got paid for my acting," said Samak, whose recipes include "Pigs' legs in Coca-Cola."

Samak's love for food and cooking is well known. When visiting Beijing for the Olympics he whipped up a dinner for the Thai Olympic athletes that included stir-fried chicken with mushrooms and baby bamboo shoots.

Sakchai Khaewwaneesakul, the managing director of the company that produced the show, testified in support of Samak, saying he paid the prime minister 20,000 baht, or about $600 Cdn, per show for incidental expenses.

"The presenters of our shows are not our employees, but we pay them honorariums," he told the court.

Samak has not been able to enter his office, the Government House, since protesters stormed the compound Aug. 26. Despite facing emergency rule in Bangkok, the protesters have refused to leave. Samak has refused to step down.

The deadlock has made it difficult for the government to function and raised fears of an economic downturn.

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ADB to submit plan for $38 mln project in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will submit next month to its board of directors a proposal for an emergency food aid project following the Cambodian government's request for 38 million U.S. dollars to ensure food security between 2008 and 2011, local newspaper reported Monday.

The project would benefit more than 500,000 people in five provinces and the Tonle Sap river and some poor areas in Phnom Penh, Arjun Goswami, the bank's country representative, was quoted as saying by the Phnom Penh Post.

He said worldwide price hikes for food and fuel have pushed traders to sell their rice to neighboring countries, thus driving down domestic supply.

"Our highest concern, as well as that of the government's, therefore, is to do whatever we can to ensure that the vulnerable segment of the population continues to have affordable access to basic food commodities," Goswami said.

He said that in response to rising food costs the government has established an interministerial National Food Security Taskforce, headed by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which would provide overall policy guidance and coordination of the project.
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Cambodia to crack down on pirated movies, music

Phnom Penh (dpa) - Cambodia would begin raids on shops suspected of selling pirated movie DVDs and music CDs, a senior official warned Monday.

The South-East Asian nation has become well-known among travellers for its thousands of shops offering dirt-cheap pirated copies of the latest international movies and music, which often hit the stalls before they are in general release overseas.

"The ministry will implement measures imminently to stop the sale of pirated CDs and DVDs to protect the intellectual property of their writers and producers," said Tauch Sarou, undersecretary of state for the Culture Ministry.

"But the ministry alone cannot stop this, so we will cooperate with police and the vendors themselves to stamp the problem out," Sarou said. "It isn't going to stop overnight, but we need the sellers to understand the issue and why we must do this. We will not stop until they do."

The ministry called a meeting of bootleg vendors Friday to warn them of the new crackdown, and police said Monday that they were prepared for the raids.

Cambodia's bootleggers enjoyed impunity for years, but the country was accepted as a member by the World Trade Organization in 2003 and the body has given it until 2013 to comply with regulations.

A vendor from Prey Nokor CD near the capital's Central Market said Monday that she understood intellectual property rights well but that sellers found themselves in a catch-22 situation.

On the one hand, nobody imports original work to Cambodia, and on the other, the 2-dollar-per-disk cost for pirated copies prices the genuine articles out of the market, said the vendor who declined to be named.

"However, I will stop if the law is enforced because I know artists have rights even though it will kill my business," she said.

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E-visa eases travel chore

For an upcoming tour to Cambodia, I got a visa for $25 via e-mail, and it took just two days.

That's about nine days faster and $100 cheaper than the traditional method of filling out a paper application, then mailing it with your passport to a visa expeditor.

Tourists go online to http://evisa.mfaic.gov.kh/, fill out the form, upload their photo, use PayPal to pay the fee and press Submit.

It benefits Cambodia, which is trying to attract tourists. It benefits travelers, because it's so easy. Two days later, I came back to the Web site, entered a reference number and my e-mail address and downloaded the visa..

While American tourists can travel to many popular countries such as England and France without a visa, e-visas make traveling to visa-requiring nations not only easier, but more welcoming.

One hopes more of them will join the trend. Bahrain has it. Armenia has it.
Even Australia has replaced its requirement that American tourists have visas with an easier online Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) requirement. The ETA is good for up to three months and can be applied for at www.eta.immi.gov.au.

Meanwhile, the United States still has one of the toughest visa policies in the world. Would-be visitors from most countries need a personal interview even to get a tourist visa. Now, the U.S. is using e-visa technology as a new security measure.

Starting Jan. 12, even visitors from countries that don't need visas, such as England and Germany, will have to register before their trip to the U.S. at the "Electronic System for Travel Authorization" Web site at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov. It requires visitors to provide all the information they would provide for a visa, so it's basically a de-facto visa requirement, even though it features electronic approval.

While some countries are using e-visas to reduce barriers to tourism, the U.S. is doing the opposite.

What does 'bumped' mean?

There was confusion among readers when I wrote recently about a new law that doubles the amount of compensation airlines must pay for bumping passengers off flights.
The main question: Does it count as being bumped if your flight is canceled? No.

"Bumped" means only one thing -- that you are a confirmed passenger on a flight but are denied boarding at the gate because the plane is full, AND it leaves without you even though you did not volunteer to be bumped, AND you refuse whatever compensation the airline offers you.

In that case, the airline must follow federal law. If it cannot get you to your destination within an hour of when your original flight was to have arrived it must pay you up to $800, depending on the level of delay.

The number of truly bumped passengers is only about 1 per 10,000, but nobody wants to be that one unlucky dude.

Wi-Fi coming to Delta

Delta Airlines is installing Wi-Fi technology on its planes to make it possible to surf the Internet in flight.

Available by late fall on some aircraft, it should be on the whole fleet by next summer, for $9.95 per flight. American Airlines has announced a similar move.

In theory, Internet in the air sounds fine. My only worry? If some loudmouth with a headset hooks up an Internet telephone-type connection like Skype at 30,000 feet and blabs for hours, circumventing the no cell phone rule.

On the other hand, maybe someone could use Skype to order mid-air pizza for the starving passengers. Read more!

Anti-tank mine kills 5, wounds 3 in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A truck hit an anti-tank mine in a former stronghold of Cambodia's ultra-communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas, killing at least five people and wounding three, police said on Sunday.

The victims of Friday's accident in the northwestern district of Anlong Veng included women and children who were traveling in a truck carrying rice to a mill, police said.

The area near the Thai border, was once a base for Khmer Rouge guerrillas and is where the group's chief, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

Recent heavy rain could have loosened the soil and shifted the mine onto the road, provincial police chief Menn Ly said.

Decades of civil war, especially in the former battlefields of Khmer Rouge, left Cambodia as the world's most mined country -- an estimated 4-6 million landmines are believed to be still planted in the countryside.

Mine-clearing teams have cleared over 400 square km (155 sq miles) of land but another 4,000 square km are still to be de-mined, said Leng Sochea, a spokesman for Cambodia's Mine Action Centre.

About 450 people are killed each year in Cambodia by mines, down from about 800 in earlier years. Many more are maimed.

(Reporting by Ek Madra; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

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Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese cross the border to go to school

by Le Hoang Vu

AN GIANG — Schools in Khanh An Commune, An Phu District, An Giang Province are welcoming hundreds of new Vietnamese-Cambodian students from Kan Dal Province, Cambodia this academic year.

The majority of the students hail from Pec Chay Commune, Koh Thum District, Cambodia, where many ethnic Vietnamese are living.

Khanh An Commune’s Primary School B has more than 600 Vietnamese-Cambodian students, according to principal Nguyen Tan Tai. All of the school’s new first graders are Vietnamese-Cambodian.

Vietnamese-Cambodians made up 60 per cent of Khanh An Commune’s Primary School A’s 930 students, said principal Nguyen Thi Sanh.

According to Le Van Be, Khanh An Secondary School principal, 30 per cent of the 800 new students this year live in Cambodia.

More and more of Khanh An Commune’s student body is Vietnamese-Cambodian because many cannot afford to send their children to schools in Cambodia.

The Vietnamese-Cambodian students’ parents, many of whom are illiterate, also hope their children learn to both read and write their mother tongue.

Thus, many of these overseas Vietnamese cross the border into Viet Nam to take their children to school every day.

Bui Minh Hung of Koh Thum District, Cambodia sells fish at An Giang Province’s Khanh Binh border gate, and brings his child to a Khanh An school every day. After all his stock is sold, he takes his child home at 12 a.m.

Despite a difficult commute, Nguyen Thi Xuan of Koh Thum District, Cambodia still makes her children to go to school in Viet Nam so they would speak Vietnamese.

Educational authorities in An Giang Province are assisting Vietnamese-Cambodian students to go to school by waiving school infrastructure fees and giving gifts.

For preparation of this school year, Khanh An Commune Primary School A gave away 878 packages of school bags and other classroom necessities worth VND100,000 (US$6) each.

Residents at the border also help out the students by ferrying them across the river for free.

Thanks to local authorities and residents’ help, many overseas Vietnamese students have beat the odds to succeed. For example, Le Duy Phuong, Nguyen Van Lanh and Diep Hoai An, all former Vietnamese-Cambodian high school students, have gone on to university.

Danh Thi My Non, a Vietnamese-Cambodian An Phu High School alum, just entered her junior year at An Giang University, said her vice principal Ngo Thai Can.

Nguyen Quang Tuu of Koh Thum District’s Vietnamese Association said many ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia were happy their children could learn their mother tongue and keep some Vietnamese cultural traits. — VNS
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US senator urges new approach to Asia trade policy

United States - WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - The United States must rethink its trade policy toward China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region and adopt new models for negotiating trade deals, a senior Democratic senator said on Friday.

"We must develop a trade policy for the Asia-Pacific region as a whole," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said in the text of a speech in Seattle to the National Center for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

The group works with the U.S. government on trade policy in the APEC region.

"Too often, China has been treated as a proxy for Asia," said Baucus, whose committee has responsibility for crafting and enacting trade legislation.

President George W. Bush, who will attend his last APEC summit meeting in Peru in November, has been criticized for focusing too much on security concerns within APEC at the expense of the forum's original emphasis on boosting regional trade, investment and development.

The 21-member group accounts for 60 percent of world economic output and brings together leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and other countries in North America, South America and Asia for annual talks.

Baucus called for a "reinvigorated APEC, one with a clear mission to expand trade between member economies."

The next U.S. administration should pursue a variety of trade pacts within the region, starting with one to liberalize just trade in services with Japan, Baucus said.

That would be break from the broader free trade agreement model followed by the Bush administration. However a pact that includes agriculture would be politically difficult for Tokyo and one that includes autos could be hard for Washington.

Baucus also urged stitching together existing free trade pacts with Chile, Singapore, Australia and South Korea into a regional accord and then expanding it to others like Malaysia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam.

He did not mention that Congress has yet to approve the South Korean agreement because many Democrats say its auto provisions favor South Korea too much.

Washington also should cut duties on goods from the poorest countries in the region, such as Cambodia, Baucus said.

The United States collects as much duties on $2 billion worth of imports from Cambodia as it does on $57 billion worth of imports from Britain, he said.

Much of Cambodia's exports are in sectors, such as clothing, where the United States has its highest tariffs. (Editing by Xavier Briand)


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Cambodia, "environmentally sustainable" tourism to save Mekong dolphin

Overfishing, war, and pollution have decimated the dolphins, and only a few dozen of them are left. Environmentalists have begun a project aimed at contributing to the development of the villages and to saving the dolphins, but their numbers continue to diminish.

Phnom Penh (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Saving the few dozen freshwater dolphins still remaining in the Mekong River, and helping the local population by guaranteeing them a source of livelihood: this is the aim of the "ecotourism" project begun in the border area between Laos and Cambodia by the Cambodia Rural Development Team (CRDT), which has the twofold objective of protecting wildlife and providing an alternative source of income for the inhabitants of the villages.

For centuries, the waters of the Mekong River - which crosses China, Laos, and Cambodia, before reaching the ocean in Vietnam - were the uncontested habitat of thousands of freshwater dolphins. The Sino-Indian War and the increase of industrialization, together with high pollution levels, have decimated the species, only a few dozen of which survive; 71, according to the latest count provided by the World Wildlife Fund.

The village of Sambor, in the north of Cambodia, is one of the places selected by the CRDT as a model of environmentally sustainable development: tourists are given the opportunity to live in contact with the local population, to help the inhabitants protect the natural habitat of the dolphins, and to teach a little English to the children. The most frequently requested activities include well digging, sewer construction, and work in the fields.

The experiment promoted by the activists is intended to save the dolphins from extinction by radically changing the habits of the inhabitants of the village, who for decades have used aggressive fishing methods like explosives and high-capacity nets. Now the freshwater dolphins are seen as a resource to be "exploited" in order to attract foreign capital and tourism; the visitors pay 60 US dollars for three days in contact with nature, and the money is used to support the local population. In a country in which half the population lives on a dollar a day, the inhabitants of the village earn five dollars a day by providing food (two dollars) and lodging (three dollars) for the visitors.

But recent studies have demonstrated that if the benefit for individuals is beyond question, the same cannot be said for the dolphins: in spite of a small increase in their numbers in the initial phase of the project, it is not yet clear whether this is truly effective for preserving the species. Scientists affirm that a new and not yet identified disease is spreading rapidly, killing the offspring. Researchers fear that the new virus - caused by pollution in the water, infested with chemical agents and the runoff from gold mining projects - could soon lead to the total extinction of the dolphins.

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So Far, It Just Isn't Looking Like Asia's Century

By Joshua Kurlantzick

So much for the Asian century. The Thais are bickering with themselves, and when they're done doing that, they'll bicker with the Cambodians -- again. China may be Japan's biggest trading partner, but they hate each other anyway. Malaysia and Indonesia? Two countries divided by the same language.

I've spent a lot of time in Asia over the past decade, as an expat and a traveler. From where I stand, the place is a geopolitical mess. Hogtied by nationalism and narrow self-interest, the countries of the East won't be banding together to replace the West as the seat of global power -- at least not anytime soon.

Asia's troubles have been on prominent display in recent weeks as anti-government demonstrations, fueled in part by anti-Cambodian nationalism, rocked Bangkok. Earlier this summer, Thailand and Cambodia moved onto war footing because of a dispute over a mountaintop temple -- not exactly a living example of the Beijing Olympics' motto: "One World, One Dream."

Of course, an Asian version of the European Union isn't out of reach, as many Asian leaders know. But today, the continent battles a kind of split personality. On the one hand, many cultural, economic and political trends suggest that Asian nations are becoming more integrated than ever before. But on the other, a virulent nationalism is spreading in the region, one that feeds on reinterpreted -- or even imaginary -- history to gin up hatred and push small-minded agendas.

Elites in Asia clearly understand the benefits of integration, and businesses and officials together are promoting the trend. In 2004, China replaced the United States as Japan's biggest trading partner. Chinese yearly trade with the ten Southeast Asian nations will likely surpass $200 billion by 2010.With the expansion of satellite television, Asian airlines and regional hiring by Asian conglomerates, businesspeople watch the same news, cool their heels together in a slew of space-age international airports and mingle at cocktail parties and pan-Asian business summits. Fads that start in Tokyo or Seoul, such as drinking red wine or dying hair blond, sweep through the region. At summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), I've seen packs of diplomats gathered at bars swapping stories in fluent English about their hijinks during graduate school at Johns Hopkins University.

Despite all that love, most of the region's multilateral institutions do little more than meet for the sake of meeting. In Cambodia and Laos, local officials and fishermen despair that dams built by China on the upper portion of the Mekong River are blocking water flow -- and ravaging fishing in the southern stretch of that river that snakes through their countries. "But when we . . . try to bring this up at ASEAN meetings," Sokhem Pech, a leading Cambodian Mekong expert, told me, "no one even wants to talk about it." The committee officially monitoring the Mekong, which doesn't include China, is so feeble that it rarely speaks out on the issue.

The problem: Calls to nationalism and an obsession with sovereignty are drowning out calls for cooperation. The passage of time since World War II, when nationalism led to catastrophe, has allowed politicians to wield it more freely for short-term gain. "The Chinese are ignorant, so they are overjoyed," Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara quipped after China launched a manned spaceship in 2003. "That [spacecraft] was an outdated one. If Japan wanted to do it, we could do it in one year."

This sort of nationalism isn't the stuff of a few firebrands. Across the continent, populist politicians have scrubbed school textbooks, whether to minimize Japan's atrocities in South Korea and China during World War II or to erase the memory of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia -- perhaps because Prime Minister Hun Sen was an officer in the genocidal regime before he turned against it. Traveling to Cambodia, I meet teenagers who know practically nothing about what happened in their country in the 1970s. China, too, has whitewashed the memory of the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989. When a "Frontline" documentary crew went to Beijing University a few years ago and showed students the iconic 1989 photograph of the man who stopped a tank in its tracks, no one recognized it.

Politicians aren't the only ones embracing nationalism. In 2002, when Thailand was still recovering from its financial meltdown, government-backed filmmakers produced "The Legend of Suriyothai" to restore their country's wounded pride. One of the most expensive pictures in Thai history, it told the story of an ancient Thai queen who died fighting Burmese invaders -- and compounded Thais' hostility toward Burma, their neighbor to the west.

The Internet has further empowered Asian nationalists, allowing them to air their vitriol unchecked. On Chinese online bulletin boards such as the "Strong Nation Forum," which is run by the People's Daily, respondents compete for the most aggressive stance and ridicule Chinese leaders for compromising on issues such as relations with neighboring countries or Tibet or Taiwan. In Japan, the blogosphere helped spark sales of the manga comic book "Hating the Korean Wave." And in Indonesia, online writers helped fuel anger at neighboring Malaysia for the use of a supposedly Indonesian jingle in a tourism campaign and for the mistreatment of an Indonesian karate referee. These are petty grievances, but the Internet amplifies even the smallest outbursts, and reactions can be fierce. Just last week, Vietnam's foreign ministry called in China's ambassador to protest the appearance on Chinese Web sites of "invasion plans" that purported to detail the occupation of Vietnam by the People's Liberation Army.

Whenever I visit Asia, I meet young people who detest neighbors they barely know. "The Thais, all they care about is money. Nothing else," one Burmese acquaintance told me in Rangoon, despite the fact that he'd never actually been to Thailand. In one study taken last year by a leading Japanese nongovernmental organization, two-thirds of the Chinese polled said they had either a "very bad" or "relatively bad" impression of Japan.

As any politician can tell you, public opinion counts. In an open society such as the Philippines, rising anti-Chinese sentiment helped force the government in September 2007 to suspend China-funded projects valued at $4 billion. Even countries that have little history of animosity toward each other can be swept into a rage by the new nationalists. In 2006, after Singaporean state investment fund Temasek Holdings purchased Thai telecommunications giant Shin Corporation, Thai bloggers and online columnists condemned the deal, arguing that a Singaporean company would have control over sensitive Thai communications infrastructure. Thousands of Thais marched to Singapore's embassy in Bangkok -- a move that left urbane Singaporean diplomats, more accustomed to managing business deals than bullhorns, a bit flat-footed.

All these problems don't seem to have resonated in the United States, where an entire industry has developed around predictions that the Asian century will replace the American one. And maybe it will -- a few centuries from now.
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Thai protesters enjoy free food, $3 massage

By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand - Once open only to the ruling elite, Thailand's stately Government House has turned into a cross between a refugee camp and a village fairground.

Thousands of anti-government protesters occupying the prime minister's office compound have set up a tent city complete with free food, outdoor showers, entertainment, massages and lots of manicured shrubs for hanging laundry to dry.

The siege, in its 11th day Friday, is aimed at forcing Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to resign. The demonstrators have not succeeded in kicking him out of office, but they have kept him out his office.

To ease the kinks caused by round-the-clock protesting, massage services are available under the shade of palm trees for $3 an hour.

In a live radio broadcast Thursday, Samak called the situation a national embarrassment and refused to step down — drawing boos and jeers from thousands of protesters fanning themselves on lawn chairs outside his office.

"I am outside and can't work properly," Samak said, his speech broadcast from a sound stage set up on the Government House lawn.

Samak initially based himself at a military headquarters outside Bangkok, but his aides say he has lately worked from an office at the Defense Ministry.

"Is it shameful? Yes, it is," Samak said.

Still, authorities have been reluctant to use force against the crowd for fear they will be denounced for sparking violence with the protesters, who have armed themselves with makeshift weapons and vowed to resist any attempt to remove them.

Also, violence, or the perception that it was imminent, could cause the military to stage a coup with the excuse that it was necessary to restore order, as it did in September 2006. It was demonstrations by the People's Alliance for Democracy, which is leading the current protest, that sparked the instability that led to the coup.

The new demonstration is built on the alliance's belief that Western-style democracy does not work for Thailand. It says the ballot box gives too much weight to the impoverished rural majority allegedly susceptible to vote buying that breeds corruption. It wants Parliament to be revamped so most lawmakers would be appointed rather than elected.

The protest has caused one of the biggest political crises since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. It is the first time in the country's history that civilians have overrun the seat of government.

Built in the early 20th century and modeled after a Venetian palace, the Gothic-style Government House is one of Bangkok's most distinguished buildings.

The alliance's security volunteers sit behind a barbed-wire barricade at the entrance, which is stacked with motorcycle helmets for protection and golf clubs, bamboo rods and rudimentary shields.

"Welcome! Would you like something to eat?" asked Pongping Kumna, a protester manning the free food stand just past the entrance gate. Tables were piled high with donated food, many ordered from popular Bangkok restaurants.

Recent offerings included sauteed chicken with chili and basil, Thai-style noodles from a famous downtown noodle shop, McDonald's hamburgers and, for dessert, chocolate doughnuts and shaved ice with fruit flavoring.

"We have everything we need here. There's no reason to leave," said Pongping, 44, a clothing shop owner from the southern beach town of Krabi who had camped at the compound for nine days.

Protesters, mostly royalists, wealthy and middle-class urban residents and union activists, have tapped into the Government House's electricity system. Extension cords charge mobile phones and power televisions.

The anti-government channel ASTV, owned by protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul, is broadcast round-the-clock on TV sets scattered around the grounds.

Fiery anti-Samak speakers take the stage, alternating with pop singers, like one recently crooning James Taylor songs as the crowd clapped and swayed.

When supplies are needed, protest leaders take the microphone and call for donations from supporters, who have responded by trucking in portable toilets and rudimentary outdoor showers with curtains for privacy.

The stench of urine and garbage is a problem they are trying to address.

Signs taped to the building's ornate facade note: "The Government House is the property of the Thai people. So all Thais should keep it clean."

For medical needs, there are several first-aid stations, which also hand out free shampoo, soap, mouthwash and razors.

Doctors from hospitals and clinics around Thailand have taken leaves to join the protest, said Bangkok ophthalmologist Somporn Reepolmania, pointing out a surgeon, dentist, psychiatrist and anesthesiologist.

"We are protesting against Samak and against the corrupt politics of Thailand," he said. "The government has no morals, no ethics, and the system doesn't work. We have to change it."

Protesters say they are not afraid of conflict. Some have traveled long distances to take part in the demonstrations.

"I flew from Los Angeles to Bangkok to be with (my) people," said United Airlines flight attendant Maree Lertphraewphun, who has lived in the United States for 38 years. She requested vacation to join the protests.

"If I happen to die, I will die with them," she said.

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Thai PM buys time with referendum plan

By Darren Schuettler

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has bought some time with a referendum aimed at defusing street protests, but it will do nothing to resolve Thailand's fundamental political conflict, analysts say.

Leaders of the three-month old campaign to oust the 73-year-old premier vowed to continue their protest, including the 11-day occupation of Samak's official compound in Bangkok.

But with a national referendum looming it becomes much harder to force Samak out through intervention either by the military or the king, who has stepped into disputes in the past.

"I don't see any quick resolution of this situation," Giles Ungphakorn of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University said, adding Samak had cleverly batted the ball back to the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

"The PAD's strategy now will be to increase pressure and they will have to discredit the referendum," he said of the motley coalition of royalist businessmen, academics and activists leading the sit-in at Government House.

Samak, who refuses to quit or call an election, announced the referendum on Thursday, two days after imposing emergency rule in Bangkok. He said on Friday he was considering lifting the decree after the army refused to evict the PAD by force.

A new referendum bill passed its first reading in the Senate on Friday, but it could take up to 90 days for final approval.

It's still not clear what question would be put to Thailand's 65 million people. But Samak would likely win on the back of strong support in the countryside, where many Thais blame the protests in Bangkok for hurting the economy.

"Many of these well-off protesters may think they can afford to join the rally, but they don't realize that the demonstration is hurting everybody else in this country," glass blower Prapha Janjaem said in Baan Bangsai, a village north of Bangkok.

The stock market has fallen more than 26 percent since the PAD launched its campaign at the end of May, while the baht has plunged to a 19-month low against the dollar. The crisis has also hit tourism, with airlines and hotels reporting cancellations.

Rubber exporters said some shipments had been disrupted by anti-government industrial action by rail workers.

Thanachart Securities said a referendum would not end the crisis, which has eroded investor confidence in Thailand.

"We feel there are just two ways out -- either the prime minister quits or he calls an election," it said.

PUPPET OR PM?

The PAD, which accuses Samak of being a puppet of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, removed in a 2006 coup, launched its street campaign in May, signaling a return to open political warfare in Thailand.

Thaksin, still admired by rural Thais who handed him huge parliamentary majorities in return for his populist programs, is believed to be pulling political strings from exile in London.

He is despised by Bangkok's middle class, the military and the royalist establishment, who all opposed his modernizing agenda. He was also accused of abuse of power and corruption while in office.

"The current drama could take years, if not decades to resolve itself. It is nothing short of a class war with two opposite groups of elites backing their respective sides," Bangkok's Nation newspaper said.

It said Samak was betting that the military "don't have the cheek" to launch a coup before the referendum.

Army chief Anupong Paochinda has said repeatedly that a putsch would not solve the country's political problems.

But more bloodshed on the streets could prompt the military or King Bhumibol Adulyadej to intervene. A move by the latter would be unlikely to favor the government, although it would be nuanced and espouse the need for national harmony and stability.

"The question is whether or not the PAD will have enough patience to wait for this vote or will it continue to provoke the situation," said Kim Eng Securities analyst Vikas Kawatra.

There has been no major violence in Bangkok since emergency rule was imposed on Tuesday, but the situation remains tense.

A gunman on a motorcycle fired at 100 students marching to protest at Samak's home on Thursday night, wounding two of them.

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Thai Seamico Securities to buy into Vietnamese firm

BANGKOK, Sept 5 - Thailand's Seamico Securities PCL said on Friday it would buy a 25 percent stake in a securities firm in Vietnam as part of its plan to expand overseas.

The brokerage did not say how much it had paid, but it said in a statement to the Thai stock exchange that it could eventually take up to 49 percent in Vietnam's Thanh Cong Securities Co J.S.C.

Thanh Cong Securities has registered capital of $21.5 million and Thanh Cong Textile Garment is a major shareholder, the statement said.

Vienam's main stock index <.VNI>, which rose 24 percent last year after jumping 145 percent in 2006, has lost 41 percent this year, hit by global credit woes and soaring domestic inflation.

Seamico, ranked seventh among Thailand's 38 listed brokers, focuses on underwriting share and debt issues as well as advising companies on initial public offerings.

The Thai firm has said it expected to receive a licence to enter Cambodia later this year.

It posted a second-quarter net profit of 28.15 million baht .

At 0829 GMT, Seamico shares were unchanged at 2.22 baht while the overall index <.SETI> was 1.38 percent lower.

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Cambodian Senate president returns home from China visit

Cambodian Senate President Chea Sim arrived in Phnom Penh on Friday after paying an official visit to China.

Chea Sim was welcomed by some Cambodian senior officials and Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Zhang Jinfeng at the Phnom Penh International Airport.

At the invitation of Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Chea Sim left Cambodia Monday for China to pay a five-day visit.

During his stay in China, Chea Sim respectively met with Wu Bangguo, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, and Jia Qinglin on Tuesday. 　

Source:Xinhua Read more!

Cambodian American Heritage Museum exhibit mirrors archivist's life story

When Ty Tim, his wife and daughter survived the Khmer Rouge's brutal regime and came to the United States as refugees in 1982, they brought with them two things from Cambodia: a small ivory Buddha he found while searching for food in the jungle and a copper coin his mom gave him before she died in a forced labor camp. Both were hidden from Khmer soldiers in the pockets of his daughter's pants.

Since 2004, Tim, who lost four of his five children during the Khmer Rouge's murderous rule from 1975 to 1979, has been returning to his homeland, bringing back what he couldn't before.

Tim, 65, has acquired wooden carvings, ancient Cambodian instruments, sacred texts on palm leaves, etchings from the Angkor Wat temple, children's toys and fishing traps. Some of the treasures—novelties and replicas of ancient works because Cambodian law bans removal of historical artifacts—grace the walls of his Skokie home.

But many of them made up the core of the Cambodian American Heritage Museum's exhibit last year on the arts and culture of Cambodia and are part of the exhibit opening Sunday on every day life in Cambodia.

The exhibits at the museum, 2831 W. Lawrence Ave., are in partnership with Northern Illinois University.

Tim, a retired teacher and the museum's archivist, says the exhibits help Cambodian-Americans remember aspects of their culture they may have forgotten. Many refugees came to the U.S. from Cambodia ready to put tragedy behind them and quickly faced the challenges of learning a new language and making a living, he said. The exhibits also can teach non-Cambodians and a new generation of U.S.-born Cambodian-Americans who may know little about Cambodian traditions.

"They need to know something about their culture," Tim said.

Although the ivory Buddha and copper coin, used by Cambodians as a massaging tool, are not on display, Tim's own story appears to echo through the exhibit.

His father was a farmer. Tim grew up harvesting rice and catching fish using the basketlike traps his father made. A fish trap like the one he used is in the exhibit, as are some of the different types of rice he helped harvest.

Knowing a bit about farming came in handy under the Khmer Rouge, which took power in 1975. The regime, which sent the population to work in rural farms and killed more than 1.5 million people, was anti-intellectual.

So teachers such as Tim often hid their profession, claiming instead to be illiterate farmers.

But the Khmer soldiers would still test them, ordering his family to grow vegetables on infertile land and forcing him to plow rice fields.

He has brought back Khmer-language textbooks and toys used by children in schools. A wooden toy that mimics the toad mating call comes from Tim's own collection. Nearby, a ceremonial silver tea set and wedding conch used to pour holy water on the couple's hands are also on loan from him.

Today, his life in America is quite different than that life in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge forced millions like him and his family to march from Phnom Penh into the jungle. On the march through the jungle, his father died. At the farming camp, his mother and four youngest children died of starvation.

"They kept 1,200 people in that one village," Tim recalls. "When we got out from that village, there were only 400 of us left."

When Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, the family returned to Phnom Penh. Tim started work again as a teacher.

But when friends told him officials were upset over his refusal to learn Communist ideology, he and his family fled again.

This time, they walked for two months back through the jungles, without a map, desperate for water, evading land mines and soldiers of all kinds.

They eventually reached a refugee camp in Thailand.

It's a history he feels younger Cambodians such as his three youngest children—one born in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia and two in Chicago—at times fail to grasp.

So he fills his home with reminders of his native land.

And he hopes the museum exhibits will help educate them.

nahmed@tribune.com

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SCT still bullish on Cambodia

SCT Co Ltd, an international trading arm of Thailand's Siam Cement Group, expects to increase its turnover in Cambodia by 25% from last year to $50 million this year despite border tensions between the two countries. SCT managing director Kalin Sarasin said the potential for the trading business with Cambodia was tremendous as few products were manufactured locally.

Thailand is Cambodia's third biggest trading partner with value of $550 million in 2007, behind China ($750 million) and Vietnam ($650 million), he said.

''Cambodia is a net-importer country with most of products shipped from Thailand, Vietnam and China. The trading business is shown to have the highest growth, expanding relative to stable gross domestic products (GDP) growth which is expected at 7.5% in 2008.''

Major products imported to Cambodia are construction materials such as cement, roofing materials, ceramic tiles, sanitaryware and steel.

Its subsidiary, Cementhai SCT (Cambodia) Co. also exports waste paper and aluminium scrap from Cambodia to supply many factories in Thailand, he added.

The construction business, according to Mr Kalin, is among sectors that have shown strong prospects in the neighbouring country along with oil and gas, plantations and agro-industries and labour-intensive ventures such as garments and logistics.

In every sector, many foreign and local companies have stepped up investments in Cambodia. Infrastructure is being built to lure more investors, he said.

Office buildings and serviced apartments are in high demand for expatriates. Several South Korean developers are investing in condominiums in Phnom Penh while the construction market is growing dramatically in Siem Reap and Kampong Som, added Mr Kalin.

''There are many oil and gas exploration activities in Cambodia, boosting the demand for related materials such as piping and structural steel for rigs,'' he said.

In the agricultural sector, Chinese and Thai investors are investing in plantation projects in Cambodia. Major crops are rice with tapioca, palm oil, and rubber becoming more attractive for investors.

Mr Kalin played down the impact of the border dispute over the Preah Vihear temple, saying it would not last long.

''The dispute has not affected our operations much,'' he said. ''With our strong distribution network and many local staff, we are ready to move on with our business plan there and adapt to all situations.''

Siam Cement (SCC) shares closed yesterday on the SET at 158 baht, unchanged, in trade worth 83.9 million baht. Read more!