Lettre au Rédacteur en Chef du New York Times.
"This year is the 20th anniversary of the Paris peace accords that ended the Cambodian war and any further threat from the murderous Khmer Rouge" wrote Elisabeth Becker in her opinion published by the New York Times on August 17. This is, from someone who used to be a responsible journalist, a surprising statement.
Like her, I reported all the peace negotiations. Like her, I wrote many comments about UNTAC, the UN operation that was in charge of implementing the accords. But I do not share her global evaluation of the agreements signed in Paris in 1991 and the way they have been implemented. Because the peace accords failed to bring peace in Cambodia. They failed to end the Khmer Rouge threat.
Facing the refusal by the Khmer Rouge to open the fourth of the Cambodian territory under their control to the UN blue helmets, facing their refusal to disarm and to demobilize their 40.000 soldiers, the UN Secretary general, B. Boutros-Ghali, an old friend of Khieu Samphan, the former Democratic Kampuchea head of State, imposed a "patient diplomacy" that let the Khmer Rouge problem without solution when UNTAC left the country.
In September 1993, at the end of the UN operation, the territory under the control of Pol Pot and his fellow murderers was larger than two years before. Fightings resumed at the same level than before UNTAC. 28% of the annual budget of the Royal Government of Cambodia were allocated to the military activities. Three hundred thousands people remained under the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge. Hundreds if not thousands of civil servants of the legitimate authorities and ordinary citizens lost their life between 1993 and 1998, victims of the men of Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan. Dozens of fishermen and their families were massacred by the Khmer Rouge because they were of Vietnamese origin. Bridges were destroyed ; trains were attacked. Even three foreign tourists, together with thirteen Cambodians, were captured on July 26, 1994 and murdered with iron bars by the Khmer Rouge. I don't think that the relatives of Australian David Wilson, 29, Briton Mark Slater, 26, and Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet, 27, and the thirteen Cambodians will appreciate the words of Elisabeth Becker.
In the eighties, 200.000 Vietnamese soldiers failed to destroy the Khmer Rouge movement. During UNTAC, 16.000 Blue Helmets failed to disarm the Khmer Rouge soldiers. Immediately after UNTAC, the negotiations with Khieu Samphan led by King Norodom Sihanouk failed also. It was the so called "win-win policy" implemented by the Royal Government of Cambodia that brought finally peace in Cambodia. The surrender of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea in December 1998 and the capture of Ta Mok, the "butcher of Cambodia", in March 1999, ended a war that started three decades before. A war that the Paris peace accords failed to stop.
These are facts. And they are indisputable.
Raoul M. JENNAR
Former "diplomatic consultant to the International NGO Forum on Cambodia"(1989-1993), former consultant to UNTAC, to the UNESCO, to the European Union in Cambodia (1993-1999) and to the Royal Government of Cambodia (2007-2011). Author of several books on Cambodia, whose the latest is "Trente ans depuis Pol Pot. Le Cambodge de 1979 à 2009", Paris, L'Harmattan, 2010 and the next is "Khieu Samphan et les Khmers Rouges. Réponse à Jacques Vergès" Paris, Editions Demopolis : to be published the coming September.