Cambodia: Besieged Ratanakiri minorities to reap benefits of growing ecotourism

TOURISM to the remote northeast is booming, say Ratanakkiri provincial tourism authorities, who argue the province's ethnic minority communities are uniquely placed to benefit from the upswing in visitors to the region.

Feb 14, 2010 – TOURISM to the remote northeast is booming, say Ratanakkiri provincial tourism authorities, who argue the province's ethnic minority communities are uniquely placed to benefit from the upswing in visitors to the region.

Despite a global economic downturn that has seen international arrivals to the Kingdom decrease, Ratanakkiri welcomed 90,744 visitors in the first nine months of the year, up 12 percent on the same period last year.

Pal Vuth, director of the tourist office in the provincial capital Banlung, said international visitor numbers - numbering 15,236 this year to September - had been boosted by the improved road and air links to the province, including the opening of the international border into Vietnam's Gia Lai province earlier in the year.

"There is now more transportation and more services, [and] an international border crossing so tourists can cross from Vietnam directly into [Ratanakkiri]," he said, adding that visitors were drawn to the national parks and the ethnic minority villages that dot the province.

At the end of October, China announced it was providing Cambodia an US$80 million loan to pave the 118km stretch of road linking Banlung to National Road 7 at Stung Treng's O'Pong Moan, which tourism officials say will further increase tourist traffic.

Ecotourism potential Deputy Provincial Governor Sim You Song said local authorities were focusing on the province's ecotourism potential, promoting its natural beauty as an alternative to more expensive Asian destinations.

"We have promoted the tourism industry by informing people in the cities to visit the northeast region of Cambodia, particularly Ratanakkiri, rather than visit other countries," he said.

Another of the province's exotic attractions - its patchwork of distinct ethnic minority groups - is likely to witness the effects of the increase in tourist numbers, with local communities saying a growth in ecotourism could help preserve the local environment.

In Ratanakkiri, the government grants natural attractions to minority communities as "community commissions", which allow groups to maintain the sites independently.

Pal Vuth said that under the commissions, such as the one controlling Yeak Loam, a volcanic lake 5km from Banlung, the majority of money earned from the tourist sites goes to preserving the natural beauty of the sites.

"Since they live nearby, it is easy for them to manage tourist sites. The benefits belong to the communities," he said.

Trach Noung, a representative of the Tumpuon community-run Yeak Loam Lake Tourism Management Committee, said the community earned around 800,000 riels per month from admissions to the lake, which were poured directly into improving infrastructure at the site.

"To attract more tourists to Yeak Loam Lake, we try to keep everything around the lake in a natural state," he said. Six other sites, including lakes and waterfalls, are controlled in this way by local communities.

Cultural preservation Some community representatives also hope ecotourism will encourage the preservation of traditional customs.

Van Sokim, 25, a Krung indigenous representative from Tangkropu village in Ratanakkiri's O'Chum district, said his community welcomed tourists for the financial benefits, but said it could also help preserve indigenous traditions.

"Krung indigenous people do not care about their culture, they do not wear their traditional dress," he said. "If there were tourists visiting the community, people would preserve their culture in order to attract tourists."

Ek Yothin, provincial program director of the Indigenous Community Support Organisation, agreed that tourism offered many benefits to minority communities.

"The positive effect is that communities can benefit from selling the visitors arts and crafts," he said.

However, a fresh influx of outsiders could accelerate other developments that are eroding traditional cultural practices, he said.

"Some people come as tourists to assess the land of the villagers, to see what the possibility is for a rubber plantation. They do not come to help the community," he added.

Dam Chanthy, the Jarai director of the Banlung Highland Association, said tourism would be hurt by the threat of land-grabbing by rich businessmen, cases of which have multiplied across the province since 2004.

The Jarai village of Kong Yu, in O'Yadao district, is currently fighting a high-profile case against Keat Kolney, sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, over 450 hectares of communal land she claims to have purchased in 2004.

"If there is land-grabbing among ethnic minorities, it will strongly affect the number of tourists," Dam Chanthy said. "Most tourists want to see places where ethnic minority people live and farm, but if those lands are grabbed, where will they live and farm?"

Pal Vuth said that tourism, properly managed, could help preserve indigenous culture.

"The tourism authorities never talk about tribal peoples' tradition," he said. "The government takes care of Angkor Wat but ... [it] does not motivate tribal people to maintain their traditions."
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Thai PM says government wants to ease tension with Cambodia

Bangkok - Thailand's prime minister on Sunday said his government is taking diplomatic measures to ensure tension with neighbouring Cambodia does not worsen. Thailand does not want to confront Cambodia and is doing what it can to prevent harm coming to people living on both sides of the border, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said, adding that both countries need to take upmost caution.

Tension has centered on the 11th-century Preah Vihear Temple, which the International Court of Justice awarded the to Cambodia in 1962. But it did not rule on the surrounding land, which both countries claim.

The relationship between the two nations has been tense for more than a year with sporadic clashes between troops near the disputed area surrounding the temple. Much of the border between the two countries has yet to be demarcated.

Over the past 18 months, Thai nationalists have used the Preah Vihear issue to stoke tensions, which last erupted in late January when troops from the two countries fired on each other in the disputed area. Neither country reported casualties.

Then early this month Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen visited Preah Vihear in a politically charged trip.

At the time Abhisit played down Hun Sen's visit, and on Sunday continued to state that diplomacy was the best way to approach the issue.

The relationship between Cambodia and Thailand worsened markedly last October when Cambodia appointed Thailand's fugitive ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra to be a government adviser.

Cambodia appointed Thaksin, who has a two-year jail sentence still to serve in Thailand for abuse of power, as an economic adviser to the government and to Hun Sen.

Bangkok considers the appointment of Thaksin, the de facto opposition leader, as interference in its internal politics.

Thaksin was prime minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006 before being toppled in a bloodless coup. He fled the country and has live in self-imposed exile, mostly in Dubai, since August 2008.
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Catching Cambodia on the cusp of development

By Elaine Moore


Douglas Clayton, founder of frontier market fund manager Leopard Capital, has a habit of relocating to the country he believes is on the cusp of development. Right now, his home is Cambodia.

“It’s fun to be in countries that are changing rapidly,” he says. “Cambodia is where Thailand was 30 years ago, and where Vietnam was 15 years ago. There is a lot going on.”

Leopard Capital manages funds in what it calls “overlooked, transitional economies”. It boasts contrarian investor Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom newsletter, as a non-executive director and seeks to invest in start-ups as well as existing businesses in South East Asia.

In April 2008 it launched the Leopard Cambodia Fund, which closed in January 2010 with more than £34m (€39m $53m) to invest in a variety of multi-sector Cambodia projects. Mr Clayton says a second Cambodian fund is planned for later in 2010.

Investors tend to have some knowledge of Asian developing economies and tolerance for the idiosyncrasies that investment in these countries involves.

Cambodia’s economy is, at around $8bn (£5bn, €6bn), smaller than some multi-national companies, and with per capita gross domestic product of less than $800, it is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

Another obstacle to investment is the lack of transparency and endemic corruption in the country. The 2008 Transparency International survey ranked Cambodia 166 out of 180 countries.

“The legal system in Cambodia is a work in progress but it gets better every year,” says Mr Clayton. “Cambodia is no worse that any other south-east Asian developing country and most importantly, the government wants to attract foreign investment.”

In fact, Mr Clayton rates Cambodia alongside Hong Kong and Singapore as one of the most open countries to do business in. Corporate income tax is 9 per cent and there are no laws against 100 per cent foreign ownership of companies, although land can only be fully owned by Cambodians.

After it was ravaged by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s Cambodia has experienced 30 years of remarkable growth and has attracted a steady stream of investors lured by the country’s political stability under long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen, and the potential for its undeveloped natural resources.

The capital city may still lack a coherent public transportation system or large shopping centre, but its transformation from ghost town to thriving city is used to illustrate Cambodia as a post-war success story.

Between 2000 and 2007 the country’s economy grew by 9.5 per cent a year, second only to China.

When the Cambodia fund was launched by Leopard Asia in April 2008, the founders planned to raise $100m, with a projected investment return of 30 per cent.

But as the global recession took hold across Asia, interest in frontier funds such as the Leopard Cambodia Fund, which require investors to tie in their money for relatively long periods of time, dwindled, and the group decided to close the first fund and invest the money.

So far the largest investment made has been $5m to CamGSM, which operates Cambodia’s largest mobile phone network. As with many developing countries, landline coverage in Cambodia is fairly sparse, but mobile phones are widely owned.

The fund has also invested $2m into Kingdom Breweries, a Cambodian beer brewery, which aims to produce high quality beer in a microbrewery in Phnom Penh; over $1m in Greenside Holdings to construct a rural power distribution system; and $1.5m for 24 per cent of a property project in downtown Siem Reap, near the tourist attraction of Angkor Wat.

The fund will also invest up to $4m into Cambodia Plantations to lease approximately 3,000 hectares of land to grow rice. The first harvest is expected in 2011.

Agriculture remains one of the dominant industries in Cambodia and a number of countries such as Malaysia and Korea have taken advantage of the cheap price of land to lease thousands of hectares to grow rice.

The second Cambodian fund is expected to continue investment in agriculture, as well as potentially including investment in Laos.

Before this is launched the group will focus on two new Sri Lanka funds. The private equity Leopard Sri Lanka fund aims to raise $100m, while the Leopard Sri Lanka Value fund will seek to raise $30m to invest in listed equity. Although Sri Lanka is a more sophisticated and larger economy than Cambodia, it has lacked investors while in the grip of a brutal civil war. Leopard Capital plans to invest in industries that were already well developed but came to a halt during the war, such as tourism, retail and agriculture.

“We are the first wave of money coming into the economy,” says Mr Clayton. “Once the world realises that this country is safe again this economy is going to take off.”


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Rain, snow threaten Lunar New Year

BEIJING — Heavy rain and snow storms were set to hit parts of China on Saturday, meteorologists said, threatening travel chaos as millions headed home on the eve of the Lunar New Year.

The Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year, is China's most important holiday, reuniting families around the vast nation of 1.3 billion and triggering an exodus believed to be the world's largest annual human migration.

China's Meteorological Administration said on Saturday the country's south was set for rain and snow, while temperatures in the north would begin to fall.

Heavy snow would also fall over parts of the east.

"Everyone must make preparations for rain, snow and falling temperatures when returning home or going out to visit relatives and friends," it said in an earlier warning.

Authorities are hoping to avoid a repeat of the chaos after a massive cold wave and freezing rain hit southern and central China in 2008, crippling transport systems and stranding millions just as the travel rush got under way.

The government has said that 210 million passengers are expected to take the train during the current New Year period, which officially began late January. Nearly 30 million more will travel by air and millions of others by bus.

With many Chinese living and working in cities a long way from their family, the crush on transport and resulting price hikes was a problem, Xinhua said, adding the price of a return train ticket could be as much as one month's salary for some.

Guo Kai, a 30-year-old Beijing IT worker, told the agency tickets were hard to come by.

"A few of my friends queued up overnight outside ticket offices, and others bought tickets from scalpers," Guo said.

Other costs also make the trip expensive, he said, citing the tradition of handing out red envelopes containing money.

"I bought gifts for my parents, but no cash. I will do more house chores as compensation," he said.

South Koreans also gather in home towns or ancestral villages during the Lunar New Year to pay their respects to ancestors.

Transport officials there said the majority of the 25 million people on the move -- around half the country's population -- would be taking to the roads, some of which had been hit by heavy winter weather.

The Lunar New Year is also a major public holiday across several other parts of Asia.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a Lunar New Year message that he hoped the coming year would see a reversal of the city-state's plunging birth rate.

Lee said he was particularly worried about ethnic Chinese couples who chose to hold back having babies during Tiger years because of a superstition that children born during the year will have the animal's attributes.

"It is one thing to encourage ourselves with the traditional attributes of the zodiac animals," he said.

"But it is another to cling on to superstitions against children born in the Year of the Tiger, who are really no different from children born under other animal signs."

Singapore's first casino will start operating on Sunday, in time for the Lunar New Year, the operator said Thursday.

Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel is hoping to cash in on Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year starting the same day this year, the first time in decades in what has been dubbed locally as "double happiness".

The swanky hotel is offering a helicopter service that lets boyfriends propose to their sweetheart or married couples exchange vows mid-flight as they watch New Year fireworks in the city's famed Victoria Harbour.

Hotel spokeswoman Winvy Lung said it was rare for the two celebrations to coincide.

"It is traditional for people to spend time with relatives during the day but we can foresee that many couples would still like to celebrate Valentine's Day in the evening," she said.

In Cambodia, around 300,000 Cambodian Chinese prepared to join in the festivities.

Suon Sopheak, 27-year-old Phnom Penh resident, said it is becoming important in Cambodia's society, with even Cambodians of none Chinese descent joining the fun.

"My parents say their ancestors were Chinese. Even though I don't look like one, we have to celebrate it annually to send the offerings to ours like we celebrate the Khmer one," Sopheak said.

"When I was in school, friends always boasted about celebrating the New Year, and made the ones who didn't jealous."

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Ta Kwai not occupied by Cambodia

The army insisted that Cambodian troops did not occupy Ta Kwai Hindu temple in Surin last week.

Spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd yesterday said Cambodian troops entered the Ta Kwai temple in Surin province on Thursday but it was because of a misunderstanding between Thai and Cambodian forces.

Thailand claims Ta Kwai temple, 15km east of Ta Muan Thom temple, but Cambodia contests the claim. As a result, the two countries agreed neither side would occupy the temple.

Col Sansern said that on Thursday military patrols from both sides came face to face at Ta Kwai. The Thai forces decided to withdraw, but the Cambodian troops did not.

The army held talks with their Cambodian counterparts, who later withdrew.

Col Sansern said Cambodia agreed there had been a misunderstanding during troop rotation at the border.

In another development, a Cambodian military tribunal yesterday convicted a Thai man of planting landmines along a disputed section of the border and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Suphap Vongpakna confessed last week to planting at least five mines in territory disputed between Thailand and Cambodia, saying Thai soldiers had paid him to do it.

"The court has considered the accused man's confession, so it sentences him to a jail term of 20 years, which is open to appeal," military judge Pohk Pan said.

Suphap, arrested last February, faced a maximum of 30 years in prison for attempted murder, endangering national security and entering Cambodia illegally.

Defence lawyer Sam Sokong said he would consult his client on whether to appeal the decision.

Troops from both sides have been killed or injured by landmines along the border.

Thailand accused Cambodia of freshly deploying landmines after a pair of Thai soldiers were wounded in October 2008.

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Foreign Ministry seeking to help Thai national jailed in Cambodia for planting landmines

BANGKOK, Feb 13 (TNA) - Following the Cambodian court ruling, sentencing a Thai man to 20 years in jail for planting landmines along the Thai-Cambodian border, the Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Kasit Piromya said on Saturday that the ministry is seeking to help the convicted Thai national and has dispatched Thai officials to visit him.

French news agency Agence-France-Presse (AFP) reported Friday that 39-year-old Suphap Pakna was sentenced to 20 years in Cambodian jail after he confessed in proceedings that he had planted at least five landmines in Cambodia's town of Anlong Veng near the disputed areas claimed by both countries.

The news service said that he was arrested one year ago and that the Cambodian authorities charged him with attempted murder, endangering national security and entering Cambodia illegally.

Associated Press (AP) quoted the Cambodian court record as saying Mr Suphap was arrested by Cambodian border guards just a few metres inside Cambodian territory while carrying a land mine on February 27, 2009.

The Thai foreign minister said that he has been informed that the Cambodian court read the verdict several days ago.

He said the foreign ministry wants to help Mr Suphap and has already instructed the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh to carry out consular visits to him.

The Cambodian court ruling came only few days after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen visited the ancient Preah Vihear temple and boost morale for his troops stationed in the area last weekend.

The Cambodian premier also planned to visit the Ta Muen Thom ruins which belong to Thailand, but he was not allowed to enter the area as Thai security agencies said the situation was unfavourable for fear of possible confrontation with protesters from Thailand's People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) gathering near the temple.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that Preah Vihear belongs to Cambodia, but Thailand has argued that the 1.8 square miles (4.6 sq km) area near the temple belongs to it. Demarcation of the area remains unresolved, leading to sporadic clashes between soldiers of the two countries since then. (TNA) Read more!

A golden leaf looking for a forest

Kilong Ung survived the Khmer Rouge; now he helps people learn from the past

By Myles Murphy
Ashland Daily Tidings


Kilong Ung was a young boy in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took power in the early 1970s. Between 1974 and 1979, Ung survived while his parents and sister died in a genocide that claimed the lives of as many as 3 million people.

He has documented his story in the book "Golden Leaf, A Khmer Rouge Genocide Survivor" and will talk about his experience at the Ashland Library from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday.

"I want people to get a better appreciation of life and to understand what happened," Ung said Thursday in a telephone interview from his office in Portland, where he now lives. "My theme is leveraging the past to make the world a better place."

Ung's talk is part of a collaboration co-sponsored by Gallerie Karon and the Friends of Ashland Library.

Gallerie Karon is hosting a show through February, "East Meets East IV" which features textiles, adornments, leatherwork and other artwork from, among other East Asian countries, Cambodia.

Actress Helena De Crespo, who performed in the recent one-woman-show "Shirley Valentine" at Oregon Stage Works, was instrumental in bringing Ung to Ashland while the Gallerie Karon exhibit was on display.

"I was introduced to Helena several months ago, but I couldn't get the time to do an art show at the time," gallery owner Karen Wasser said. "Helena suggested Kilong. He's very in demand these days so we're very lucky."

Ung, now a software engineer in Portland and an adjunct computer programming instructor at Portland Community College, made it to the United States in 1979.

With little English at his command, he learned quickly and graduated from high school in Portland in 1983, going on to earn degrees from Reed College and Bowling Green State University.

Now he spends time traveling around giving motivational speeches in different communities. He is a past president of the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon and participates in numerous community and business groups.

Ung's language becomes poetic as he describes his journey and his purpose following the publishing of "Golden Leaf."

"I was lucky," Ung said. "I was a golden leaf, blown by the wind. I went further and put down roots and became a tree."

He hopes through his talks to inspire others.

"As a tree I can only do so much," he said. "I want the audience to become my fellow trees. We all have a past. We all are ordinary people, but we can do uplifting things."

After one recent talk, Ung was approached by a man who bought his book. A short time later, after reading the book, the man returned with a $5,000 check to help Ung in his work building schools in Cambodia.

"The forest is growing," Ung said. "To be a tree is a privilege and with that privilege comes responsibility."

Still a very poor country, wracked by political instability, Cambodia is fertile ground for aid, Ung said. But helping often requires a political dance, and Ung strives to build schools there without becoming entangled in bureaucracy and political controversy.

"I'm not involved with government or politics," he said. "It's purely as humanitarian as possible. We have to walk very gingerly, navigate through political systems."

On a smaller scale, de Crespo is working on a similar project. She is organizing work to create a theater and housing for one specific theater group she came in contact with while traveling in Cambodia. She has collected shadow puppets and set pieces made of leather made by members of the Cambodia theater group, which will be on display at Gallery Karon through this month.

For more details on Ung's life, see the Web site www.kilongung.blogspot.com.

De Crespo also will give a talk and slide show about her experience in Cambodia at Gallerie Karon, 500 A St. No. 1, from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Myles Murphy is an editor and reporter with the Daily Tidings. Reach him at mmurphy@dailytidings.com.


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U.S. Naval Vessel to Make Port in Cambodia's Coast of Sihanoukville

The USS Patriot, an Avenger- class countermeasures vessel from the 7th fleet based in Hawaii will make port in Cambodia's coast of Sihanoukville early next week, according to a statement released Friday by the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh.

The statement said the USS Patriot will begin a weeklong visit starting from Monday and to conduct exercises with the Cambodian Navy.

Sihanoukville province is located 230 kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh.

The bilateral training exercises will focus on damage control, search and seizure and at sea rescue techniques.

In addition, naval surveyors who are also traveling on the ship will assist their Cambodian counterparts in taking sides scan surveys of the port area to check for possible obstructions in commercial shipping lanes.

Both the bilateral training exercises and the survey are being orchestrated at the request of the Cambodian Navy and the Port Authority.

This is the fifth visit by a U.S. naval ship since the resumption of military to military engagement between the U.S. and Cambodia.

The statement said that "each visit represents another important step in this evolving relationship as well as an opportunity for military personnel from both countries to exchange experiences, tips and techniques which will assist them in the future."

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Thailand deports crew of NKorean weapons plane

BANGKOK -- Thailand on Friday deported members of a foreign plane crew accused of smuggling arms from North Korea, a day after prosecutors dropped all charges against them.

The five crew members, from Kazakhstan and Belarus, were escorted to Bangkok's Suvannabhumi airport by at least a dozen police, and left in the early evening on an Air Astana flight for Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The five were arrested Dec. 12 when the Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane they were flying from the North Korean capital Pyongyang landed in Bangkok. Thai authorities, acting on a tip from the United States, seized the plane and 35 tons of weapons on board.

North Korea is barred under U.N. sanctions from exporting weapons.

Flight documents indicated the plane's destination was Iran, but officials there denied they were importing weapons.

Thailand's Attorney General's Office said Thursday the decision to drop charges against the Il-76 crew was made after the governments of Belarus and Kazakhstan contacted the Thai Foreign Ministry and requested the crew's release so they can be investigated at home.

"To charge them in Thailand could affect the good relationship between the countries," said Thanaphit Mollaphruek, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. "They were only here for refueling."

Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said Thai authorities were still awaiting advice from the United Nations on how to dispose of the weapons. Read more!

Cambodian court gives Thai 20 yrs for laying mines, AS

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A Cambodian military court on Friday sentenced a Thai man to 20 years in prison for trying to lay land mines.

Judge Pohk Pan convicted Suphap Wongpakna, 39, of illegally entering the country and planting an explosive to cause bodily harm, an offense under Cambodia's terrorism law.

Relations between Cambodia and Thailand are tense over territorial disputes and the status of a former Thai prime minister.

Suphap was arrested by Cambodian border guards on Feb. 27, 2009, along the border near the town of Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia. He was arrested just a few meters (yards) inside Cambodian territory while carrying a land mine, according to the court's record.

Speaking through an interpreter, the defendant said he was a former member of Thailand's paramilitary Rangers force — which operates mostly along the borders — and that he had been hired by his former commander to plant mines.

He said he had already planted five mines near the border before being arrested, and had received 2,000 baht ($60) for each mine.

In Bangkok, a Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman, Thani Thongphakdi, said Suphap was not affiliated with any Thai government agency. Thani said the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh was seeking access to him to offer consular assistance.

Suphap's lawyer, Sam Sokhong, said he would consult with his client to see whether he wanted to appeal the verdict.

In a high-profile case last year, Cambodia convicted a Thai citizen employed by Cambodia's country air traffic control company on a spying charge.

The arrest of Siwarak Chothipong became a major issue in bilateral relations and in Thai domestic politics because of the involvement of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 military coup.

Thaksin is a fugitive from Thai justice, but was appointed an adviser to the Cambodian government and given a VIP welcome in November by Cambodian Premier Hun Sen.

Siwarak was accused of passing Thaksin's flight plans to the Thai Embassy. He was convicted of stealing information that could impact national security and sentenced to seven years in prison, but was pardoned less than a week later.

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The world is her stage

By Myles Murphy
Ashland Daily Tidings


Helena de Crespo always has been fascinated by the ancient complex of elaborately constructed temples of Angkor Wat deep in the jungles of Cambodia.

During a trip to the nearby island city-state of Singapore three years ago, de Crespo couldn't resist taking a side trip to satisfy her lifelong curiosity.

It was a decision that would set her life on a new track.

"I really stepped into another world," de Crespo said.

While returning from the temples, she saw a huge, colorful stage set up on the side of the road, complete with proscenium, painted curtains, lights and a large group of actors, stagehands and theater artisans. Herself an actor (she appeared most recently in Ashland in the one-woman Oregon Stage Works production of "Shirley Valentine"), she felt compelled to stop and learn more about the group.

"As I began talking to them, I began to learn more about Cambodia," de Crespo said.

A period of political unrest and violence in Cambodia in the 1970s climaxed when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. For the next four years, people were forced out of cities to work in the fields, banking and currency were abandoned in favor of an agrarian society, torture centers were created and public executions became common. Between starvation and killings, as many as 3 million people died during that period. Cambodia's population at the time was about 7.5 million, according to the U.S. State Department.

"Actors were among the first killed by the Khmer Rouge because they were keeping alive cultural traditions," de Crespo said. "Anyone closely resembling an intellectual was killed."

Many villages across the country had their own theater groups, which traveled from place to place retelling old stories, histories and mythologies. De Crespo had come across one such group that has been struggling to revive the tradition.

She decided to help. By using her connections to the theater community in the states, she was able to draw support and funds toward building a theater and housing for the group in Cambodia.

She also made contact with the Cambodian community in the U.S., which is how she met Portlander Kilong Ung, himself a refugee from Cambodia. Ung is speaking Saturday at the Ashland Branch Library as part of a collaboration cosponsored by Gallerie Karon and the Friends of the Ashland Library.

"He lived through it," de Crespo said. "I'm just a peripheral observer."

Searching for the most efficient way to help the Cambodian thespians, de Crespo learned that they were essentially homeless and that in the rainy season, their incomes dropped to nothing.

"They can't perform during rainy season and the company goes through hard times," she said. "The best way to help was to build a permanent housing complex with a performing area, stage, housing and buildings to construct costumes, sets and puppets."

The puppets are made from cow and buffalo leather punched with holes to allow light through to make for interesting silhouettes.

De Crespo has brought many examples of these puppets to Ashland for the show at Gallerie Karon.

De Crespo also will give a talk and slide show about her experience in Cambodia from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Gallerie Karon, 500 A St. No. 1. For information on de Crespo's Cambodia project, see the Web site cambodiantreasures.com.

Myles Murphy is an editor and reporter with the Daily Tidings. Reach him at mmurphy@dailytidings.com.


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Human development database

NEW YORK, USA, 11 February 2010 – DevInfo is a database system that harnesses the power of advanced information technology to compile and disseminate data on human development. The latest version – 6.0 – was officially launched in 2009 and is the most powerful and user-friendly version to date.

DevInfo 6.0 completed its global, region-by-region roll out last week in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

DevInfo allows users to organize, store, access, display, monitor and analyze standardized human development data in a uniform way, categorized by indicator, time period, geographic area or source.

Whether sharing data at the country level, across government departments, with UN agencies or development partners, DevInfo makes it easy to make informed, evidence-based decisions about development issues.

Reports and presentations

National statistics offices, UN agencies, donors, non-governmental organizations and civil society can use the system to produce tables, graphs and maps for inclusion in reports, presentations and advocacy materials.

The software supports both standard indicators – such as the Millennium Development Goals – and user-defined indicators in line with national priorities.

UNICEF manages DevInfo with the support of the United Nations Development Group. The software is distributed royalty-free to all end users. Thousands of current users contributed their insights and experiences to the DevInfo 6.0 development process.

User-friendly interface

The intuitive, user-friendly DevInfo interface provides straightforward navigation. Users can browse data in several different ways, while other techniques allow ‘drilling down’ into the details of each data value in the system.

A new Data Wizard allows first-time users to generate tables, maps and graphs in just three easy steps.

DevInfo 6.0 features powerful data presentation methods, enhanced web collaboration and extended mapping features. The software offers a range of tools to present disaggregated data by sub-national administrative units and by sex, location, age and other socio-economic dimensions. DevInfo 6.0 also includes enhanced reporting features, easy-to-generate, animated presentation objects – such as flipbook and video options – and advanced data analysis tools like animated bubble plots.

In addition, a new data exchange module introduces powerful data management utilities, allowing users to import data into the DevInfo format from industry-standard statistical software packages.

DevInfo initiatives worldwide

Presently, more than 275 adaptations of DevInfo are being used in over 130 countries; there are an estimated 24,000 trained DevInfo users around the world.

Beyond these national and regional adaptations, dozens of global organizations rely on the DevInfo database technology to disseminate the results of their work:

MDG Info 2009 is a customized version of DevInfo providing wide access to the official Millennium Development Goals data set maintained by the UN Statistics Division. The website, www.devinfo.info/mdginfo2009, allows stakeholders to access key human development data on all UN Member States.

CME Info – Child Mortality Estimate Info – is available at http://www.childmortality.org/. Powered by DevInfo technology, it allows users to track the progress of any country in reducing infant and child mortality.

MICS Compiler, powered by DevInfo, allows users to search indicators across UNICEF-sponsored Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, which are conducted worldwide and based on nationally representative samples. MICS Compiler indicators use standard definitions for international comparability and can be found at http://www.childinfo.org/, the one-stop source for UNICEF statistics on children and women.

CensusInfo, at www.devinfo.info/censusinfo, a software package adapted from DevInfo database technology, was launched in 2009 to help countries disseminate census data. Developed jointly by the United Nations Statistics Division, UNICEF and UNFPA, CensusInfo provides a method to organize, store and display data in a uniform format to facilitate census data-sharing at the country level across government departments and UN agencies.

Gender Info 2010 contains the official UN MDG data – disaggregated by gender – for more than 50 indicators, providing over 300,000 data values. Gender Info 2010, at http://www.genderinfo.org/, is the result of an Interagency effort supported by the Expert Group on MDGs, including: UNFPA, The World Bank, UNDESA/DAW, UNIFEM, ILO and UNICEF.

To learn more about the impact of DevInfo on people’s lives – and to obtain a free copy of DevInfo 6.0 software – please visit http://www.devinfo.org/. Read more!

On course for a better tomorrow in Cambodia

The children of Chumkriel in Cambodia are out of sight but not out of mind for Dubbo and Narromine residents who continue to fundraise for their future.

In mid-2009 the volunteers travelled to Chumkriel, which former Narromine woman Joselyn Barber has “taken under her wing”.

In the poverty-stricken community the Australians built a toilet block, taught youngsters to wash their hands, and offered expert advice to the Chumkriel Language School and Learning Centre on matters including its English curriculum and financial management.

In just weeks they broke down the barrier of distrust to become welcome visitors and contributors to the recovery from Pol Pot’s brutal regime.

Since returning to western NSW, the group has directed its efforts towards raising cash to help buy a block of land in Chumkriel where a much-needed new learning centre will be built by volunteers in May and October.

On March 7 it is teaming up with Narromine Rotary members in running a charity golf day.

Narromine’s Vicki Gainsford says all are welcome to attend, with the proceeds going “entirely into securing the block of land for the new classroom”.

“Cambodia’s population is predominately very young, very poor and uneducated, because of the slaughter during Pol Pot’s regime,” she said.

“One-in-five children will die of dysentery or related diseases.

“They are a beautiful people and they are so appreciative of the help we are giving them. We can give them a chance in life.”

Ms Gainsford was a member of the group that travelled to Chumkriel last year, as was Mark Horton of Dubbo Rotary Club.

“Mark informs me that Dubbo Rotary is still trying to raise several thousand dollars ... to seal the deal on the block of land,” Ms Gainsford said.

Dubbo and district residents are being encouraged to travel to Narromine next month and take part in the fundraising effort, a two-person ambrose.

The cost of $20 includes a barbecue lunch with “lots of prizes and fun guaranteed”.

Joselyn Barber is helping the people of Chumkriel “to realise the dream of gaining an education and learning English,” Ms Gainsford said.

“With Jos and Rotary driving the engine, we can be assured that no money is being wasted and Jos is there to see the project through to fruition,” she said.

For more information or to find a golfing partner, call 688 90115.

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Cambodia at the end of its tether

O SVAY (Cambodia) - Cambodia's Prime Minister says his country will complain to the International Court of Justice that Thailand is occupying its land.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Tuesday that Thailand had encroached on land around the landmark Preah Vihear Temple, in northern Cambodia, which the court awarded Phnom Penh in 1962. He made his remarks while visiting the disputed territory.

Thailand acknowledged Cambodian sovereignty over the temple, but both countries claim 4.6 square kilometres of nearby land. Their troops have clashed there several times.

"Cambodia has reached the limits of its patience," Mr Hun Sen said on Tuesday during a visit to the disputed territory.

"Cambodia wants to solve this territorial dispute by filing a complaint to the international court at The Hague," he said, adding he would ask the United Nations to help solve the issue.

Nationalist passions have run high at the border since 2008 after Thailand first backed, then opposed Cambodia's bid to name the 11th-century temple a UN World Heritage site.

Cambodia and Thailand share an 800-km land border, part of which was never clearly demarcated because each country relies on different maps.

Meanwhile, Internet giant Google has promised Cambodia it will review a map of Preah Vihear Temple, though it stopped short of saying it would change the document.

The Cambodian authorities accused Google of being "professionally irresponsible" in a letter sent last week, because its Google Earth map depicts nearly half of the Preah Vihear Temple as being in Thailand.

Google, in a letter sent to the government, said it was "carefully reviewing" Phnom Penh's objection but also suggested that it contact Tele Atlas, a mapping company it says provided the border data to the company. AGENCIES
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Surakiart to govt: Just get over Thaksin

The government needs to get over its obsession with Thaksin Shinawatra or it will lose what remains of its withered credibility overseas, says former foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai.

Thailand's post-coup standing in the international arena was deteriorating and it had lost the confidence of its neighbours, Mr Surakiart told a Chulalongkorn University forum yesterday.

Thailand had also lost its unique role as a regional coordinator and venue provider for sensitive issues, said the foreign minister who served under Thaksin.

"We've dropped off the radar as a positive influence on the international community, and joined the negative radar for our ongoing domestic political rifts that destroyed several international meetings hosted here last year," he said.

Thailand could reverse the harm it had done to itself if domestic politics, especially its obsession with self-exiled former prime minister Thaksin, were detached from foreign affairs.

"Thailand needs to make friends with its neighbours again," he said.

"Informal meetings, phone calls, short visits or quick lunches must be reintroduced at both ministerial and leader levels with key countries such as Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma and China."

On the Cambodian dispute, he advised the government to separate politics from boundary issues and think carefully before retaliating to jibes.

"Of course, the leader of one country slamming another is a disgrace and we all know that [Cambodia] should also detach itself from nationalism when it approaches issues concerning Thailand.

"Thankfully, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva did not respond to the latest provocations, which could have spurred on the latest bilateral dispute even more."

Mr Surakiart said Thailand consistently underestimates other countries.

"We need to overhaul the way we evaluate situations regarding our neighbours. They have dignity, connections and friends much more than they had in the past, which is why Thailand's veto of Cambodia's unilateral listing of the Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage site was unsuccessful," he said.

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Google says it will look into complaint from Cambodia that border map with Thailand is wrong

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Google Inc. says it will look into a complaint from Cambodia that a map of a disputed border with Thailand is wrong, though it stopped short of saying it would change the document.

The company is responding to a complaint last week from Cambodia about the Google Earth map that it called "devoid of truth and reality, professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious." Cambodia is calling on Google to replace the map with one that is internationally recognized.

The border area near the 11th century Preah Vihear temple just across the border in Cambodia has been the focus of a long-running dispute between Cambodia and Thailand. The World Court awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but sovereignty over the surrounding land has never been clearly resolved.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Experiencing life in Cambodia

After an invitation from the Catholic Agency for International Aid and Development, Caritas Australia, a group of Queensland educators along with Caritas representatives travelled to Cambodia last November for 10 days to see the work of Caritas first hand. QCEC executive officer for communications Gerard Delaney reports

CARITAS is a Latin word for love, and love was clearly evident in the work that Caritas Australia is doing to support some of the poorest of the poor in Cambodia.
Our group flew into Phnom Penh on a rainy afternoon last November.

The bustling capital city of about 1.3 million people, despite pockets of obvious affluence, is clearly "developing world".

Rubbish and powerlines are strewn between the shacks and sheds that pass for houses and shopfronts.

Motor scooters are everywhere and many have three, four or even five people crammed onto them.

On the day we arrived, people were huddled together beside the road under whatever shelter they could find to wait out the storm.

A police officer asked our driver for money in order to be allowed to pass through an area of the city that was closed off due to the annual water festival, but the driver declined, refusing to be part of the corruption.

Despite the obvious challenges, people seemed to be happily going about their business.

Happy, peaceful and dignified were qualities we found consistently among the people we met during our 10 days in this intriguing nation.

An estimated 36 per cent of Cambodia's 14.2 million people live below the poverty line and about 85 per cent of these live in rural areas.

The average daily income of Cambodians is less than $1.20 per day.

Among other health issues, about 170,000 Cambodians live with HIV/AIDS and more than 60,000 children are orphaned by the disease.

Caritas Australia, known in Cambodia as Australian Catholic Relief (ACR), has been working there since 1979 when the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime collapsed.

The dictator Pol Pot seized power in mid-1975 with the aim of returning Cambodia to a purely agricultural-based society. He forced city dwellers out to rural areas to work on farms and labour projects.

Over the next four years, the combined effects of slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care, torture and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people or about 20 per cent of the Cambodian population.

In many ways the country is still recovering from this horrific chapter in its history.

From 1979-1987 Caritas focused on providing emergency relief support and from 1988-97 on reconstruction work through the government ministries of agriculture, primary health care and education.

Since 1998 Caritas has worked in partnership with several local non-government organisations (NGOs) and has focused its energies on two main areas of support - integrated community development projects in both rural and urban settings, and HIV/AIDS care and prevention.

The partnership approach is central to the Caritas philosophy that local people are best placed to make decisions about their own needs and priorities.

The approach also helps ensure that improvements are sustainable as local people are empowered to design and manage their own development programs in a way that is culturally appropriate and therefore "owned" by the communities.

Caritas provides assistance to 560 Cambodian families with 2746 members in 73 villages and one urban slum area.
Support is also provided to 114 people living with HIV/AIDS and 162 orphaned and vulnerable children.

Caritas' community development work includes construction of school buildings and water wells and the provision of small loans to increase income generation capacity and food security through small businesses or growing vegetables and livestock.

Education about hygiene and health care is a high priority, along with HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support.

The positive impacts of the community development programs are obvious when comparing the villages working with Caritas and those nearby that are not.

The project villages are much cleaner, the poultry and other animals look healthier and gardens are thriving.

The people are engaged in meaningful activity such as weaving, handicrafts and farming, and the children have the opportunity to attend school.

The role and dignity of women in the communities is also a focus of self-help group meetings along with emotional health and well-being in general. In some communities a "Happy Happy Club" has been formed for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS to come together to play and talk about their hopes and aspirations for the future.

Seeing children in circumstances of such poverty was, for me, the most challenging aspect of this immersion experience.

In each of the rural communities we visited, we met the children at their school, which consisted of a concrete slab and an iron roof. There were no resources and the availability of a teacher was sporadic.

Despite the circumstances, the children were happy and vibrant. They beamed with delight and some joined in as we did impromptu performances of the Hokey-Pokey and I'm a Little Teapot. It was hard not to be moved by their joy, but equally difficult not to ponder what their future might hold.

In addition to its community empowerment programs, Caritas also provides funding support for programs for people living with HIV/AIDS, education programs for deaf children and adults, and a youth-for-peace project that are implemented by partner aid organisations Maryknoll, Caritas Cambodia and Catholic Relief Services (Caritas USA).

Caritas Australia maintains an office in suburban Phnom Penh. The team of six staff are all local people and the professional, dedicated way they go about their work is highly impressive. The support projects are all carefully planned and outcomes are measured and documented right down to the number of chickens in each village.

The office is headed up by 49-year-old Lay Sothy ("So - tee") who as a teenager in 1975, like hundreds of thousands of others, was forced out of Phnom Penh and separated from his family under the Pol Pot regime.

Sothy returned to the city in 1979 and his involvement with Caritas happened by accident. He was working two jobs as a taxi driver and government factory worker and secretly learning English at night.

In 1990 he delivered a Caritas visitor to the office in his cab and at the time the religious sister in charge was looking for a driver and offered him a job.

He soon became the office book keeper and the rest as they say is history. Caritas encouraged and supported Sothy to study and he graduated with a masters degree in development management from the University of Cambodia in 2007.

This immersion program has been particularly important in helping strengthen relations between Cambodia and Catholic education. ACR program officer Sothun Nop will visit Brisbane as a guest of Brisbane Catholic Education from April 14-25 to work with students and staff in the archdiocese including a presentation at BCE's "Powerhouse of Leadership" event on April 19.

While there are indicators that things are improving, there is still a long way to go before all Cambodians can live with an acceptable level of human dignity.

Caritas Australia is committed to working with the poor and striving to empower them to improve their quality of life.

I believe the Australian Catholic community, in supporting Caritas, can be extremely proud of the contribution it is making to this challenge.

Caritas' annual Project Compassion Appeal will be officially launched by Governor Penelope Wensley on Shrove Tuesday, this week, at the Australian Catholic University at Banyo.

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Cambodia asks US to cancel $339M debt from 1970s

Associated Press


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Cambodia asked the United States on Tuesday to cancel $339 million in debt that dates to loans from the 1970s - or consider converting most of it into development aid for the impoverished country.

The proposal, which came during a visit by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel, was the latest in a long-running exchange about how to handle the debt and how the money was used 40 years ago.

"Cambodia has asked the United States government to cancel the debt but if it cannot do that, at least turn 70 percent of the debt into aid for the social development of the country," Deputy Foreign Minister Ouch Borith said after the meeting. He said if the latter option were accepted, Cambodia would discuss repayment plans for the remaining 30 percent.

Marciel, who is Washington's ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, later explained to reporters that the debt could only be waived if Congress passed a law authorizing it.
The low-interest loans financed rice, cotton and other agricultural commodities during the regime of Gen. Lon Nol, who came to power in a 1970 coup that ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The United States was the main financial and military supporter of Lon Nol's regime until it was toppled by the genocidal Khmer Rouge movement in April 1975.

Cambodia's government says the money was also used to "buy weapons and support the war, which caused great suffering to the Cambodian people," Ouch Borith said.

The countries have not set a repayment plan in part because the Cambodian government refuses to accept responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime and because they disagree over the amount owed. Read more!

Tim Etchells on performance: Cambodia's beat goes on

Can Cambodia begin to rebuild its shattered cultural heritage? Tim Etchells wonders if the answer lies with a team of Khmer dancers ... and a specially modified laptop

I've recently returned from two weeks in Cambodia, travelling with 18 other artists, dancers, choreographers and performance-makers at the invitation of Ong Keng Sen's Flying Circus Project. Based in Singapore, Keng Sen's Theatre Works outfit has been running these exchanges – predominantly Asian in focus, but with routes out in all directions – for something like 10 years. The intention varies with each incarnation, but the broad hope is for a two-way artistic exchange between invited and local artists, and between the invited artists themselves. To call this latter group diverse would be an understatement: our trip saw passports from Indonesia, Slovenia, Turkey, South Africa, India, UK, Lebanon, Singapore, USA and Austria, among others, landing on the immigration desk in Phnom Penh.

Highly organised and efficient on one hand, Flying Circus also courts a creative openness that at times borders on chaos. The logic for Keng Sen is that the encounter must have its own energy, that the group itself must conjure something new from the situation. An approach like this takes time and nerve, but it undoubtedly pays off.

Looking back, it's hard to say what made the biggest impression on me. The country itself remains blighted by poverty, and still in recovery from the devastation of the Pol Pot era and subsequent years of civil war and instability. Culturally, there's a determined attempt to recover what the Khmer Rouge tried to wipe out in its brutal five-year drive to Year Zero, which involved – alongside much else – killing intellectuals, artists, teachers and anyone who spoke French. For this reason, there's much talk of archives, of remembering and preserving. Around 300 feature films were made in Cambodia before 1975, of which as few as 30 now survive. They have been gathered in the last five years and preserved along with other film, sound and photographic materials at the Bophana archive in Phnom Penh, our base for half of the workshops.

The situation is equally dire in the performing arts, since only a handful of classical Khmer dancers survived the killing fields. These old masters are now a precious resource, teaching new generations techniques that otherwise would have slipped away for good. Back home in England, I generally run a mile from people attempting to rescue traditional forms; but in Cambodia, the initiative made more sense – the difference, perhaps, between a past that is dying from irrelevance or lack of interest, and one that has only recently survived assassination.

What I sensed in the younger artists and dancers we worked with, though, was a desire to move forwards with the past, and not to retreat into it. These Cambodian twentysomethings are savvy and hungry, and well aware that their country is opening up, and that internationally financed redevelopment and tourism have been following the inflow of NGOs. They know that they'll need new approaches in the arts, and new political voices to meet the challenges ahead.

I asked Keng Sen what he feared the most from his project. We talked about economic and political dangers (artists as the vanguard for property developers) and about the cultural dangers (Cambodians caught in retreading western postmodern art practice). Then we talked about the positives: the meetings, the collisions, the insistence on and the articulation of differences. There was one moment in the workshops that crystallised these possibilities for me. Tarek Atoui, Lebanese sound artist, ran a session with the Khmer participants that involved sounds collected by the dancers played out from a laptop and a complex array of homemade sensors, motion triggers and pressure pads. It was late in the afternoon when the dancers from Amrita Performing Arts, our hosts for half of the project, took to their feet and began to move in and around Atoui's machinery.

What happened was tentative at first, then suddenly too much. It was as if the dancers wanted to play the system, or make music with it, rather than dance with it. My heart sank. Then all at once they turned a corner and were dancing again – the turning wrists and fingers, lowered centres of gravity, eye contact, pantomime pauses and forward rolls all instantly recognisable from Khmer classical forms. They weren't dancing for the electronics, nor were they dancing with them exactly; they were dancing with and against them, entering and refusing, insisting on and moving through. There was tension in the dancing and music that afternoon, just as there should be on occasions of meeting. It was a privilege and an inspiration to be there.
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Runner hopes feat is one for the Record Book

By Mike DeDoncker
GateHouse News Service


ROCKFORD, Ill. — Glenn Greenberg has proved that he’ll go just about anywhere to run.

He hopes that, in doing so, he has run himself into a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Greenberg, who became the 68th person to complete a marathon on all of the world’s seven continents in 2002, thinks he may be the first to have also run a half marathon on every continent. He said he has applied for recognition by the Guinness book, but he has yet to receive a response.

Greenberg finished his half-marathon quest in Cambodia when he ran the 14th Angkor Wat International Half Marathon — a charity run to raise money to provide artificial limbs for victims of land-mine explosions — on Dec. 6.

“Once I got into it,” he said, “what really motivated me was that there was no one that I could find out about who had done both a marathon and half marathon on all seven continents. As I understand it, to get in the Guinness book, you either have to outdo someone who has done something to get in there or you have to do something that hasn’t been done.

“I got a copy of the book, and I couldn’t find any entry that said anyone else has done this.”

Greenberg said longtime friend and running partner Rose Austin, who had begun running half-marathon races that accompanied the marathons he was doing, is responsible for his second around-the-world running feat.

“When I finished my seven continents in the marathon,” he said, “Rose still had two continents to go for a half-marathon on all seven.”

He ran half marathons with her in Stuttgart, Germany, and on Australia’s Gold Coast and decided “as long as I have a couple of them in, I might as well finish the seven continents.”

Races in Nashville, Tenn., on Madagascar and Easter Island, and in Antarctica — the only place where he repeated a site of his seven-continent marathon runs because there is only one running event there — gave Greenberg six continents to lead up to the run in Cambodia.

He said the course from the temple at Angkor Wat was flat but rough “with very heavy traffic as we ran through the temple grounds.”

Greenberg said the Madagascar and Easter Island runs stood out most among the seven “because Easter Island is so desolate — it took a five-hour plane ride off the coast of Chile to get there — and then there is just one little town on the island and NASA landing strip, where the space shuttle could land if it had to, and that’s it. Everything runs wild there, the horses and everything. Nothing is penned up.

“Then, Madagascar was an interesting race just because of the lifestyles they live and the course was unbelievably hard to run. We ran six miles in sand and then the rest of the race was on a road that had nothing but huge holes in it.”

Greenberg, who said he runs about 40 miles per week to stay in training, said the second seven-continent feat has left him with no immediate goals, except to run a half marathon on the Indianapolis 500 track in Speedway, Ind., in May.

“I want to run more marathons,” he said, “but I don’t have any specific plans. I’m sort of an impulse runner. If something comes up I could, next week, decide to go run a marathon.”

Mike DeDoncker can be reached at (815) 987-1382 or mdedoncker@rrstar.com.
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Hun Sen lets fly at Abhisit

Foreign Ministry says remarks unacceptable

A fresh onslaught of insults by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen directed at Abhisit Vejjajiva is widening the diplomatic gulf between the two countries.
Thailand and Cambodia had been struggling to find ways to mend fences after a series of spats but Hun Sen yesterday appeared to want nothing of the kind.

He scrapped a visit to Ta Muan Thom, an ancient border temple in Phnom Dong Rak district of Surin.

Diplomatic tensions did not ease despite Hun Sen not turning up at the temple and he fired a broadside at Prime Minister Abhisit on a Cambodian website.

The Thai embassy in Phnom Penh alerted the Thai government to the remarks on the website and the Foreign Ministry was quick to counter the Cambodian leader.

"I have to apologise to the Cambodian people that up until today all Thai people and the government have wanted to resume relationships with Cambodia in all fields, including economic, social and investment cooperation," said Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, assistant to the foreign minister.

"But criticising the Thai premier so badly damages Thailand's dignity and that will make it even more difficult to normalise ties.

"The harsh and rude words should not have come from a prime minister of any country. We cannot accept it.

"It is impossible for any country to resume [good] relations without being respectful of each other first."

Thailand will now press for sovereignty over disputed areas along the Thai-Cambodian border, Mr Chavanond said.

"We have never invaded any place which is not ours. We have the evidence to confirm that the area, including Wat Kaew [Sikha Khiri Sawara] or other areas in the 4.6 sq km [of disputed territory] are under Thai sovereignty."

Tension along the border escalated after Hun Sen concluded his weekend tour of the area yesterday. His itinerary included the Preah Vihear temple.

A military standoff continued yesterday morning around the Ta Muan Thom temple as the army tripled its troop presence to about 1,500 to offset Cambodian troops beefing up security during Hun Sen's visit to the opening ceremony of a military office at Ban O-rumchong, six kilometres inside Cambodia.

"We regard Cambodia's troop increase for Mr Hun Sen as very unusual," said Col Thanet Wongcha-um, chief of staff of the Suranaree Task Force.

Hun Sen contacted the Thai army yesterday to ask if he could cross the border to visit the Ta Muan Thom ruins as a tourist after going to Ban O-rumchong.

"But we advised him this was not the right time as there were protesters [from the People's Alliance for Democracy] here which could have been inconvenient for his trip," Col Thanet said.

The Cambodian premier did not respond and then left for Phnom Penh by helicopter, he said.

Dozens of heavily armed Thai soldiers remained on guard at Ta Muan Thom and about 300 police officers equipped with batons and shields were deployed along the main road to the ruins. They were there to prevent about 150 protesters opposing Hun Sen's planned visit from entering the temple. The demonstrators had camped overnight at the Ta Muan Tod ruins, about a kilometre away.

Villagers said they were unhappy with what the PAD was doing as they wanted to live in peace in the area.

In Bangkok, Thailand has asked Unesco to show it a Cambodian plan to manage and safeguard areas at and around Preah Vihear to ensure it will not touch on the disputed territory.

"We are now asking [Unesco] to give us the plan," Mr Abhisit told reporters.

"The 4.6 sq km being disputed by the two countries is the point that we will have to consider carefully," he said.

"We have the right to see the plan and we also have the right to express our opinions. I will closely monitor the matter and I will not let Thailand lose its territory," he said.

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Cambodia's Past, Pakistan's Future?

Sitting in air-conditioned comfort, cans of Coke and 7-Up within reach as they watched their screens, the ground controllers gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness. There had been no declaration of war. No advance warning, nothing, in fact, that would have alerted the "enemy" to the sudden, unprecedented bombing raids. The secret computer-guided strikes were authorized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just weeks after a new American president entered the Oval Office. They represented an effort to wipe out the enemy’s central headquarters whose location intelligence experts claimed to have pinpointed just across the border from the war-torn land where tens of thousands of American troops were fighting daily.

In remote villages where no reporters dared to go, far from the battlefields where Americans were dying, who knew whether the bombs that rained from the night sky had killed high-level insurgents or innocent civilians? For 14 months the raids continued and, after each one was completed, the commander of the bombing crews was instructed to relay a one-sentence message: "The ball game is over."

The campaign was called "Operation Breakfast," and, while it may sound like the CIA’s present air campaign over Pakistan, it wasn’t. You need to turn the clock back to another American war, four decades earlier, to March 18, 1969, to be exact. The target was an area of Cambodia known as the Fish Hook that jutted into South Vietnam, and Operation Breakfast would be but the first of dozens of top secret bombing raids. Later ones were named "Lunch," "Snack," and "Supper," and they went under the collective label "Menu." They were authorized by President Richard Nixon and were meant to destroy a (non-existent) "Bamboo Pentagon," a central headquarters in the Cambodian borderlands where North Vietnamese communists were supposedly orchestrating raids deep into South Vietnam.

Like President Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war. On the day he was sworn in, he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks." He also spoke of transforming Washington’s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity: "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices."

Return to the Killing Fields

In recent years, many commentators and pundits have resorted to “the Vietnam analogy,” comparing first the American war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War. Despite a number of similarities, the analogy disintegrates quickly enough if you consider that U.S. military campaigns in post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq against small forces of lightly-armed insurgents bear little resemblance to the large-scale war that Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon waged against both southern revolutionary guerrillas and the military of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who commanded a real army, with the backing of, and supplies from, the Soviet Union and China.

A more provocative -- and perhaps more ominous -- analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk -- until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

You know the grim end of that old story.

Forty years, almost to the day, after Operation Breakfast began, I traveled to the town of Snuol, close to where the American bombs once fell. It is a quiet town, no longer remote, as modern roads and Chinese-led timber companies have systematically cut down the jungle that once sheltered anti-government rebels. I went in search of anyone who remembered the bombing raids, only to discover that few there were old enough to have been alive at the time, largely because the Khmer Rouge executed as much as a quarter of the total Cambodian population after they took power in 1975.

Eventually, a 15-minute ride out of town, I found an old soldier living by himself in a simple one-room house adorned with pictures of the old king, Sihanouk. His name was Kong Kan and he had first moved to the nearby town of Memot in 1960. A little further away, I ran into three more old men, Choenung Klou, Keo Long, and Hoe Huy, who had gathered at a newly built temple to chat.

All of them remembered the massive 1969 B-52 raids vividly and the arrival of U.S. troops the following year. "We thought the Americans had come to help us," said Choenung Klou. "But then they left and the [South] Vietnamese soldiers who came with them destroyed the villages and raped the women."

He had no love for the North Vietnamese communists either. "They would stay at people's houses, take our hammocks and food. We didn't like them and we were afraid of them."

Caught between two Vietnamese armies and with American planes carpet-bombing the countryside, increasing numbers of Cambodians soon came to believe that the Khmer Rouge, who were their countrymen, might help them. Like the Taliban of today, many of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, teenaged villagers who had responded, under the pressure of war and disruption, to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles.

"If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge, the main reason is because of the American invasion," Hun Sen, the current prime minister of Cambodia, has said. "If there was no invasion, by now, I would be a pilot or a professor."

Six years after the bombings of Cambodia began, shortly after the last helicopter lifted off the U.S. embassy in Saigon and the flow of military aid to the crumbling government of Cambodia stopped, a reign of terror took hold in the capital, Phnom Penh.

The Khmer Rouge left the jungles and entered the capital where they began a systemic genocide against city dwellers and anyone who was educated. They vowed to restart history at Year Zero, a new era in which much of the past became irrelevant. Some two million people are believed to have died from executions, starvation, and forced labor in the camps established by the Angkar leadership of the Khmer Rouge commanded by Pol Pot.

Unraveling Pakistan Could the same thing happen in Pakistan today? A new American president was ordering escalating drone attacks, in a country where no war has been declared, at the moment when I flew from Cambodia across South Asia to Afghanistan, so this question loomed large in my mind. Both there and just across the border, Operation Breakfast seems to be repeating itself. In the Afghan capital, Kabul, I met earnest aid workers who drank late into the night in places like L'Atmosphere, a foreigner-only bar that could easily have doubled as a movie set for Saigon in the 1960s. Like modern-day equivalents of Graham Greene's "quiet American," these "consultants" describe a Third Way that is neither Western nor fundamentalist Islam.

At the very same time, CIA analysts in distant Virginia are using pilot-less drones and satellite technology to order strikes against supposed terrorist headquarters across the border in Pakistan. They are not so unlike the military men who watched radar screens in South Vietnam in the 1960s as the Cambodian air raids went on.

In 2009, on the orders of President Obama, the U.S. unloaded more missiles and bombs on Pakistan than President Bush did in the years of his secret drone war, and the strikes have been accelerating in number and intensity. By this January, there was a drone attack almost every other day. Even if, this time around, no one is using the code phrase, "the ball game is over," Washington continually hails success after success, terrorist leader after terrorist leader killed, implying that something approaching victory could be somewhere just over the horizon.

As in the 1960s in Cambodia, these strikes are, in actuality, having a devastating, destabilizing effect in Pakistan, not just on the targeted communities, but on public consciousness throughout the region. An article in the January 23rd New York Times indicated that the fury over these attacks has even spread into Pakistan's military establishment which, in a manner similar to Sihanouk in the 1960s, knows its limits in its tribal borderlands and is publicly uneasy about U.S. air strikes which undermine the country’s sovereignty. "Are you with us or against us?" the newspaper quoted a senior Pakistani military officer demanding of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he spoke last month at Pakistan's National Defense University.

Even pro-American Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has spoken out publicly against drone strikes. Of one such attack, he recently told reporters, "We strongly condemn this attack and the government will raise this issue at [the] diplomatic level."


Despite the public displays of outrage, however, the American strikes have undoubtedly been tacitly approved at the highest levels of the Pakistani government because of that country’s inability to control militants in its tribal borderlands. Similarly, Sihanouk finally looked the other way after the U.S. provided secret papers, code-named Vesuvius, as proof that the Vietnamese were operating from his country.

While most Democratic and Republican hawks have praised the growing drone war in the skies over Pakistan, some experts in the U.S. are starting to express worries about them (even if they don’t have the Cambodian analogy in mind). For example, John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the military, says that an expansion of the drone strikes "might even spark a social revolution in Pakistan."

Indeed, even General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, wrote in a secret assessment on May 27, 2009: "Anti-U.S. sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan… especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties." Quoting local polls, he wrote: "35 percent [of Pakistanis] say they do not support U.S. strikes into Pakistan, even if they are coordinated with the GOP [government of Pakistan] and the Pakistan Military ahead of time."

The Pakistani Army has, in fact, launched several significant operations against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and in South Waziristan, just as Sihanouk initially ordered the Cambodian military to attack the Khmer Rouge and suppress peasant rebellions in Battambang Province. Again like Sihanouk in the late 1960s, however, the Pakistanis have balked at more comprehensive assaults on the Taliban, and especially on the Afghan Taliban using the border areas as “sanctuaries.”

The New Jihadists



What happens next is the $64 million question. Most Pakistani experts dismiss any suggestion that the Taliban has widespread support in their country, but it must be remembered that the Khmer Rouge was a fringe group with no more than 4,000 fighters at the time that Operation Breakfast began.

And if Cambodia's history is any guide to the future, the drone strikes do not have to create a groundswell for revolution. They only have to begin to destabilize Pakistan as would, for instance, the threatened spread of such strikes into the already unsettled province of Baluchistan, or any future American ground incursions into the country. A few charismatic intellectuals like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot always have the possibility of taking it from there, rallying angry and unemployed youth to create an infrastructure for disruptive change.

Despite often repeated claims by both the Bush and Obama administrations that the drone raids are smashing al-Qaeda's intellectual leadership, more and more educated and disenchanted young men from around the world seem to be rallying to the fundamentalist cause.

Some have struck directly at American targets like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009, and Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian double agent and suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives at a military base in Khost, southern Afghanistan, five days later.

Some have even been U.S.-born, like Anwar al-Awlaki, the 38-year-old Islamic preacher from New Mexico who has moved to Yemen; Adam Pearlman, a 32-year-old Southern Californian and al-Qaeda spokesman now known as "Azzam the American," who reportedly lives somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions; and Omar Hammami, the 25-year-old Syrian-American from Alabama believed to be an al-Shabaab leader in Somalia.

Like the Khmer Rouge before them, these new jihadists display no remorse for killing innocent civilians. "One of the sad truths I have come to see is that for this kind of mass violence, you don't need monsters," says Craig Etcheson, author of After the Killing Fields and founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. "Ordinary people will do just fine. This thing lives in all of us."

Even King Sihanouk, who had once ordered raids against the Khmer Rouge, eventually agreed to support them after he had been overthrown in a coup and was living in exile in China. Could the same thing happen to Pakistani politicians if they fall from grace and U.S. backing?

What threw Sihanouk's fragile government into serious disarray -- other than his own eccentricity and self-absorption -- was the devastating spillover of Nixon's war in Vietnam into Cambodia’s border regions. It finally brought the Khmer Rouge to power.

Pakistan 2010, with its enormous modern military and industrialized base, is hardly impoverished Cambodia 1969. Nonetheless, in that now ancient history lies both a potential analogy and a cautionary tale. Beware secret air wars that promise success and yet wreak havoc in lands that are not even enemy nations.

When his war plans were questioned, Nixon pressed ahead, despite a growing public distaste for his war. A similar dynamic seems to be underway today. In 1970, after Operation Breakfast was revealed by the New York Times, Nixon told his top military and national security aides: "We cannot sit here and let the enemy believe that Cambodia is our last gasp."

Had he refrained first from launching Operation Breakfast and then from supping on the whole “menu,” some historians like Etcheson believe a genocide would have been averted. It would be a sad day if the drone strikes, along with the endless war that the Obama administration has inherited and that is now spilling over ever more devastatingly into Pakistan, were to create a new class of fundamentalists who actually had the capacity to seize power.. Read more!

A close encounter

By The Nation


Thai, Cambodian authorities brace for Hun Sen's visit to Ta Muen Thom ruins

Thai and Cambodian authorities were busy preparing and bracing themselves yesterday for what promised to be extremely awkward diplomacy, with Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen set to visit the Ta Muen Thom ruins in Surin.

"We will act in accordance with prescribed procedures as a host and Thai representatives will be present to welcome Hun Sen upon his arrival," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said.

The ancient Khmer temple straddles a mountain pass on the border and its ownership is disputed by Cambodia despite a border marker.

Abhisit said the Cambodian leader would be accorded the hospitality given to any foreign visitor.

A group of soldiers and provincial authorities met with Hun Sen's advance team in Surin to finalise the arrangements. The Cambodian team was led by Interior Secretary of State Khann Savoeum.

During the meeting, the Cambodian team sought and received permission to take about 100 visitors sightseeing to the ancient temple. It also informed the Thai side that there might be a temporary surge of 150 troops deployed opposite the temple due to the security requirements for the visit by Hun Sen.

After the Cambodian team left, about 400 yellow shirts led by Veera Somkwamkid were allowed to visit the temple.

Veera said his People's Alliance for Democracy would not stand idly by if Cambodia attempted to project itself as owner of the temple.

He vowed to organise a yellow-shirt welcoming committee to greet Hun Sen.

At the triangle border area of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a group of Thai troops, provincial authorities and diplomats was present when the Cambodian side held a ceremony to pay respects to the deities.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Thai side had no objection to Hun Sen's visit to Thai territory if advance notice was given and permission granted and if the touring of the border was not meant to challenge Thai territorial integrity or usurp Thai sovereignty.

Democrat Party spokesman Buranaj Smutharaks said Hun Sen made misleading accusations when he claimed Thailand harboured an intention to invade Cambodia. That remark was groundless and Hun Sen should retract his statement, he said.

Abhisit said the Thai government would not read too much into the move by Hun Sen and would maintain its good-neighbour policy to prevent violence from flaring up at the border.

He said Hun Sen's border visit might be prompted by a combination of factors such as domestic politics, the controversy over Preah Vihear Temple's listing as a World Heritage site and an attempt to sway Thailand.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, who oversees security affairs, insisted that the Ta Muen Thom ruins were located on Thai soil and any visitor there, including Hun Sen, must not carry a weapon.

Prasong Nurak, who sits on the Senate committee on military affairs, said he believed that Hun Sen would not show up at Ta Muen Thom because as the leader of a foreign country, his visit would likely need to go through diplomatic channels and be handled by the Foreign Ministry.

A source said Hun Sen was in fact scheduled to inaugurate a village called Ta Muen on the Cambodian side today. That village is about four kilometres away from Ta Muen Thom.

"By the way, his programme is subject to change," the source added.
Read more!

Help for Seattle family who lost everything in fire

By TONYA MOSLEY / KING 5 News


SEATTLE - The leader of the Sahak Khemararam Buddhist Temple chants, the monks eat, and the members collect money, as Sean Phoung weeps for his only son Prackserth.

"I think about him all the time every minute, every second," he said.

It's Buddhist tradition, the food is eaten so that Prackserth (also known as Patrick) may be full on his journey to the next life. The clothing will give him warmth and the money will be burned, so that Prackserth may prosper.

So many sacrifices for their beloved son, as they Phoung family is left here with almost nothing.

"When I heard that they found my son in there I was so shocked. I lost my life," said his mother Sody.

Eight members of the Phoung family now sleep on the floor of the temple, relying on their friends for food and donated clothing. Their house was destroyed in a fire on Monday, Prackserth's body was discovered inside.

But Sean assures his family that they will endure. Thirty years ago he survived the killing fields of Cambodia and he says they will surely survive this. Tonight they're starting over and looking forward to seeing Prackserth again, in the next life.

Fire officials say they don't expect to know the cause of the fire until next week.

Contact the Cambodia Women's Health Organization for more information on how to help the family. Contact Klaudia Snguon at 206-372-0752 koltida@yahoo.com

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Peace prevails during Hun Sen visit

Asia News Network


Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's tour yesterday morning of Preah Vihear Temple - the subject of conflicting territorial claims with Thailand - went off without any incidents, but doubts remained as to his intentions in making the visit.

Arriving at 10am in fatigues, Hen Sen was met by Second Army Area chief Lt-General Veerawit Kajornrith and Si Sa Ket Governor Rapee Pongbupakit. Thai Ambassador to Cambodia Prasart Prasartvinichai was also present.

Earlier at 9am, there were some tense moments at Kaewsikhakirisawaria Temple in the disputed area, but no gunfire was exchanged.

A group of Thais led by rural activist Veeraphon Sopha said they would defend the sovereignity of the four border provinces of Buri Ram, Si Sa Ket, Surin and Sa Kaew.

They vowed to start up villages along the border to prevent Cambodians from occupying Thai soil.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said if the Cambodian premier enters Thai territory, then there will be people ready to receive him.

The situation remained normal, but Hun Sen has been making comments about Thai politics as former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra makes political moves, he said.

Noppadon Pattama, a former foreign minister and Thaksin's legal aide, criticised the Democrat Party and the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) for spreading a "lie" about Thaksin obtaining Cambodian citizenship.

Thaksin travels on Montenegro and Nicaraguan passports but is not a citizen of the two countries, he said.

Cambodia's Rasmi Kampuchia reported on Friday that Thailand is entering a state of anarchy with the red shirts - Thaksin sympathisers - ready to overthrow the government. The paper blamed the PAD for distracting public attention with the border dispute.

Recruitment for Thaksin's People's Army ended in Bangkok but more enlistment opportunities will be held upcountry, said Army specialist Maj-General Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Sawasdipol.

The formation of the controversial armed offshoot of the red shirt movement was aimed at ensuring protection for demonstrators during the upcoming bid to topple the government, he said.

The reports of General Panlop Pinmanee resigning from the red-shirt movement were unfounded, he said.

"It was a misunderstanding on the part of red-shirt leader Jatuporn Promphan. But I have discussed the matter with [red-shirt leaders] Veera Musigapong and Natthawut Saikua and the misunderstanding will be cleared."

Jatuporn said he would call both Khattiya and Panlop tomorrow to arrange a meeting to sort out the differences.

He said he alone couldn't approve the idea of a people's army as the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD) is an organisation with a committee making decisions.

"We must discuss the matter because we do not want to lose before engaging in a battle," he said.

Panlop should have discussed the matter with DAAD before leaking it to the media, he said.

Abhisit said he has no problem with Panlop leaving the red-shirt movement or the setting up of a people's army as long as it's not illegal.

Read more!

LEAD: Hun Sen visits temple near disputed Thai-Cambodia border+

The Associated Press

(AP) — PHNOM PENH, Feb. 6 (Kyodo)-(EDS: CLARIFYING THAT THAI GOV'T DID NOT OPPOSE HUN SEN'S VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, 3RD GRAF)

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, ignoring Thailand's protests, on Saturday made a brief visit to the Preah Vihear Temple near the disputed Thai-Cambodian border, his first trip to the area since the ancient temple was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2008.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan told Kyodo News by telephone that Hun Sen stayed at the temple for about one hour.

On Friday, Thai leaders said the Cambodian government should hold talks with Thailand prior to Hun Sen's visit to the area and Thailand would send a high-level official to welcome him. His trip to the Preah Vihear crosses a swath of land 4.6 square kilometers in size that the Thai government claims is Thai territory.

Phay Siphan said Hun Sen met a 22-member group from Thailand who visited the temple, including the military general and governor of the bordering Sisaket Province, and told them the temple is in Cambodia's territory and it was he who welcomed the Thais to the temple, not the other way around.

During his meeting with the Thai group, Hun Sen reassured them that the border issue will be settled peacefully, Phay Siphan said.

The premier also said he would consider opening the gate accessible from the Thai side to the Preah Vihear Temple once the border situation returns to that before the first clash between Cambodian and Thai forces in July 2008, a week after the temple was registered as a World Heritage Site.

Phay Siphan said the purpose of the visit is to meet with villagers and Cambodian armed forces based along the Cambodia-Thai border.

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Hun Sen told to visit as tourist

Cambodian security escorts 'must disarm'

All eyes are on how the already tense situation at the Thai-Cambodian border develops as Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen today begins a three-day visit which will conclude at the Ta Muan Thom temple in Surin.

The government says that while the Cambodian leader is free to go anywhere while on Cambodian soil, he is not advised to enter the disputed territory covering 4.6 square kilometres near the Preah Vihear temple without informing Bangkok.

The 2nd Army Region and provincial authorities have been instructed to make security preparations and oversee the situation during Hun Sen's visit.

The army says Hun Sen is scheduled to visit three or four locations.

Today, the Cambodian prime minister will chair the opening of Siharat Decho village and an army battalion on Cambodian soil.

On Monday, he plans a visit to Ta Muan Thom temple in Surin's Phanom Dong Rak district, which is under the supervision of Thai armed forces.

Ta Muan Thom and the neighbouring Ta Kwai temple in Surin were embroiled in the border dispute when the conflict escalated two years ago.

Phnom Penh claimed both were located in disputed territory and tried to deploy troops there.

Army sources said the army has told Cambodia that Hun Sen cannot bring troops when visiting the Ta Muan Thom temple, which is in Thai territory.

Second Army Region commander Weewalit Chornsamrit yesterday met senior Cambodian military leaders in Si Sa Ket's Kantharalak district to discuss security measures for the Cambodian leader.

Maj Gen Weewalit said he had been assigned to welcome Hun Sen if he wishes to enter the disputed area where both Thai and Cambodian troops are now deployed.

Maj Gen Weewalit said Thailand had informed Cambodia that if Hun Sen visits any disputed area surrounding Preah Vihear, Thailand will send representatives - Maj Gen Weewalit, the ambassador to Cambodia, and the Si Sa Ket governor - to join his visit.

The military source said the government had responded to the Cambodia prime minister's request to visit Ta Muan Thom, saying he was welcome there, but his security guards and followers must be disarmed and visit the temple just like normal tourists.

However, Cambodia has not responded to this demand.

He said Thai troop levels will not be beefed up as there are enough of them in the overlapping zone.

He dismissed speculation that Hun Sen's visit was intended to demonstrate ownership of the disputed territory. Concerns were also raised that Hun Sen might deliver a nationalistic speech to pep up his troops.

"I think he is paying a visit to the troops as the government leader and the commander of his armed forces.

"The army is accustomed to Hun Sen's style of talking and Cambodia's media reporting, which is not quite accurate and causes trouble," he said.

Maj Gen Weewalit insisted that Cambodian troops will be pushed back if they cross the border during the visit.

"That cannot be allowed. They must be disarmed before they are allowed to step onto Thai soil," he said.

Gen Piroon Paewpolsong, army chief of staff and secretary-general to the Internal Security Operations Command, said Hun Sen can visit the disputed area, but he is required to inform Thai authorities if he does.

"It is not a no-go zone, but there is a protocol to follow. If we are to enter the disputed area, we have to inform Cambodia too," he said.

"The visit is a Cambodian affair. We just follow the protocol regarding a border visit.

"We can talk to each other. We have no problems if they want to visit. There are procedures for it," he said.

Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh said yesterday Hun Sen has no hidden agenda in the timing of his visit which has put security forces on edge, especially following rumours that fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra would join the trip.

Gen Tea Banh said the Cambodian leader's trip is simply a morale-boosting visit for his soldiers. Hun Sen was tied up during New Year and could not pay the troops a visit. "There is no agenda. Why can't Hun Sen go to the border? It is Cambodian territory and he wants to visit his troops," said Gen Tea Banh.

He also rejected the rumour that Thaksin would accompany Hun Sen.

Former prime minister Thaksin posted messages on his Twitter page, Thaksinlive.com, saying he had no plan to visit the disputed area near the temple. He was in Dubai, he said.

Read more!