ASEAN TO MONITOR CAMBODIA-THAILAND TRUCE – Dispute cost 43 lives and displaced more than 300,000 people on both sides of the border
Cambodia and Thailand’s top defence officials agreed to allow observers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc to inspect disputed border areas and help ensure hostilities do not resume following a violent five-day conflict that ended in a ceasefire late in July.
The Southeast Asian neighbours saw the worst fighting in over a decade last month, including exchanges of artillery fire and jet fighter bombing runs that claimed at least 43 lives and displaced more than 300,000 people on both sides of the border.
Fighting continued despite diplomatic interventions from China and Malaysia, chair of the regional bloc ASEAN, both calling for restraint. The leaders of Cambodia and Thailand only came to the negotiating table when U.S. President Donald Trump told them that tariff negotiations would not continue unless there was peace, Reuters exclusively reported.
Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Seiha and Thailand’s acting defence minister Nattaphon Narkphanit met at Malaysia’s Armed Forces headquarters in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday to thrash out the terms of a permanent cessation of hostilities.
Thailand and Cambodia have quarrelled for decades over un-demarcated parts of their 817 km (508 miles) land border, which was first mapped by France in 1907 when the latter was its colony.
