VZCZCXRO3748
OO RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM RUEHNH
DE RUEHPF #1960/01 3031011
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 301011Z OCT 06
FM AMEMBASSY PHNOM PENH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7536
INFO RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHRL/AMEMBASSY BERLIN PRIORITY 0135
RUEHBS/AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS PRIORITY 0052
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA PRIORITY 2242
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON PRIORITY 0392
RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW PRIORITY 0373
RUEHOT/AMEMBASSY OTTAWA PRIORITY 0526
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS PRIORITY 0545
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO PRIORITY 3100
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA PRIORITY 1551
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK PRIORITY 2190

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PHNOM PENH 001960 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/MLS, IO, PRM 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM EAID ASEC KDEM CB
SUBJECT: CAMBODIA REVIEWS DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS SINCE 1991 
PARIS PEACE ACCORDS 
 
 ¶1.  (U)  Summary.  On October 21, the International 
Relations Institute organized a 15-year anniversary academic 
forum reviewing the successes and failures of the 1991 Paris 
Peace Accords and their implementation during the subsequent 
UNTAC period.  Cambodian government officials dominated the 
list of speakers, with CPP President Chea Sim providing 
opening remarks and Prime Minister Hun Sen delivering the 
closing address to participants.  International participants, 
most having played a role in the Paris peace negotiation 
process or during the UNTAC period, came from Britain, 
Germany, Canada, Russia, the United States, and India.  NGOs 
and the opposition party were largely absent from the 
gathering.  Government speakers lauded the role of Hun Sen 
for bringing security to the country after UNTAC's departure 
by negotiating defections of senior Khmer Rouge commanders 
and their units.  The PM reminisced about the four-year 
negotiation process that led up to the signing of the 1991 
accords, and credited his win-win policy for the demise of 
the Khmer Rouge as a political force.  End Summary. 
 
Cambodia 15 Years Later 
----------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U)  With the backing of the RGC, the International 
Relations Institute organized a one-day academic forum to 
celebrate the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Paris 
Peace Accords.  The program featured primarily Cambodian 
government and international speakers; NGOs and civil society 
representatives were omitted from the program.  CPP President 
Chea Sim opened the forum, praising Hun Sen and former King 
Sihanouk for their respective roles in promoting peace and 
national reconciliation.  The Senate leader recognized the 
role of the international community as well, and highlighted 
the importance of non-retaliation among domestic political 
leaders in achieving peace, although he noted the Khmer Rouge 
were an exception and refused to disarm and participate in 
the 1993 elections.  During his presentation, DPM Sok An 
referenced UNTAC's failure to bring peace, as stipulated in 
the 1991 accords, and enumerated the positive efforts by PM 
Hun Sen over the past 15 years that have led to peace and 
stability in Cambodia. 
 
¶3.  (U)  UNDP Resident Representative Douglas Gardner 
outlined the progress Cambodia has made over the past 15 
years in both the political and economic spheres, while 
noting the UN's commitment to continue support to the RGC in 
the implementation of the national development strategy. 
Gardner flagged future oil/gas revenues as an area for 
government planning efforts, and warned that a recent survey 
stating only one out of two primary school entrants continues 
to secondary school is a worrisome statistic.  ASEAN Deputy 
Secretary-General Soeung Rathchavy reviewed ASEAN's political 
 
SIPDIS 
stance towards Cambodia from the late 1970s until Cambodia's 
joining of ASEAN in April 1999.  Ambassadors from the EU, 
Japan, France, and the UK focused their remarks on their 
respective assistance programs in helping Cambodia realize 
the goals of the Paris Accords: political 
reconciliation/reintegration, peace and national unity, 
rehabilitation/reconstruction, and continued international 
support and cooperation. 
 
¶4.  (U)  International speakers included Igor Rogachev, 
former Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs; Nick 
Etheridge, Deputy Head of the Canadian Delegation to the 
Paris Negotiations; Peter Christian Hauswedell, former German 
Deputy General for Asian and Pacific Affairs; and former U.S. 
Ambassador Timothy Carney, who had worked for UNTAC's Public 
Affairs Office.  Etheridge recalled the 1993 elections and 
the widespread turnout of Cambodian voters throughout most of 
the country, despite the threat of violence by the Khmer 
Rouge who boycotted the elections. Hauswedell praised the 
1991 Accords for putting Cambodia on the path to democracy, 
noting Cambodia is better off today than 15 years ago.  He 
argued that Cambodia has also made better progress than other 
countries, e.g., Somalia, East Timor, Afghanistan, where the 
UN has tried to transition a country from war to stability 
and development.  The former German official noted that the 
Accords failed to lead to peace, and the demobilization 
 
PHNOM PENH 00001960  002 OF 003 
 
 
effort was not a success.  Looking at Cambodia today, 
Hauswedell described three areas where Cambodian politics 
remain problematic: the personalization of politics, 
difficulty in forming a government, and lack of 
institutionalization and respect for the opposition. 
Ambassador Carney focused his remarks on the role of 
constitutions in helping to establish a society based on the 
rule of law. 
 
¶5.  (U)  Among Cambodian scholars, former Rector of the 
University of Phnom Penh (and currently an RGC official in 
the Ministry of Education) Pit Chamnan noted that many in the 
audience (not just UNTAC) had contributed to peace and 
democracy in Cambodia.  Picking up on Peter Hauswedell's 
comment that Cambodia has fared better than other countries, 
Chamnan gave Hun Sen full credit for the country's progress. 
He noted that Cambodia has provided a favorable environment 
for the establishment of NGOs and civil society, and credited 
some NGOs with contributing to Cambodia's democratic progress. 
 
¶6.  (U)  Secretary-General for the Natural Disaster 
Management Committee Peou Samy said that democracy had to be 
adapted to Cambodian culture.  He denounced NGOs for 
criticizing the government and blamed them for the 
divisiveness that has led to violence in the country.  Samy 
also praised Hun Sen's policy for dealing with the Khmer 
Rouge:  divide, weaken, conquer, rehabilitate and 
reintegrate.  Tep Darong, President of the Royal Academy of 
Judicial Professions, focused most of his comments on the 
post-UNTAC period, and applauded the government's record of 
strengthening human capacity, the decentralization process, 
social reforms, gender and environmental issues, and progress 
towards finalizing an anti-corruption law.  The only 
Cambodian speaker to provide an academic look at the UNTAC 
period was Ros Chantrabot, Vice President of the Royal 
Academy of Cambodia, who noted that external factors and 
changing attitudes of the former Soviet Union and China 
towards Indochina in the late 1980s/early 1990s had favored 
the Paris negotiation process.  Within Cambodia, he 
continued, there was a resurgence in Buddhism and internal 
pressure for social harmony and political reconciliation. 
Finally, regional powers (e.g., Thailand and Indonesia) 
helped to support and facilitate a negotiated settlement 
between all the parties. 
 
Hun Sen:  I Did It My Way 
------------------------- 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  In a nearly two-hour closing speech to the 
audience, PM Hun Sen offered participants a series of stories 
and vignettes of the negotiation process leading up to the 
1991 Paris Accords, recalling his first meeting with Igor 
Rogachev as a 27-year-old Foreign Minister.  He noted that in 
approaching the negotiations, his two strategic goals were to 
maintain the national achievements realized since the 
collapse of the Pol Pot regime in 1979, and to prevent the 
Khmer Rouge from ever regaining power; there was no mention 
of advancing democracy or national reconciliation.  Most of 
his remarks, however, covered the post-UNTAC period and the 
PM minimized the role of the UN and international community 
in helping to ease Cambodia out of its failed state status 
and putting the country on the road democracy.  The PM said 
his win-win strategy was the sole reason for the peace 
enjoyed by Cambodians today, and was predicated on three 
guarantees to former Khmer Rouge combatants:  personal safety 
for themselves and their families, continued employment, no 
confiscation of land or property.  The PM added that he 
supported the Extraordinary Chambers' efforts to bring former 
Khmer Rouge leaders to justice and thanked donors for 
assisting in that effort.  He then skipped forward to the 
RGC's overall development policies under the Rectangular 
Development Strategy and Cambodia's historic act of joining 
the UN mission to the Sudan after hosting UN peacekeepers in 
Cambodia less than two decades ago. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
 
PHNOM PENH 00001960  003 OF 003 
 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  The conference was very much a 
government-sponsored effort to highlight the failures of 
UNTAC (e.g., lack of peace and stability) and attribute the 
country's successes to Hun Sen.  The presentations by RGC 
members were so similar that it appeared that a standard set 
of talking points had been passed around in advance.  The 
deliberate exclusion of FUNCINPEC and the Sam Rainsy Party, 
as well as the NGO community, in particular the Son Sann 
Foundation (Son Sann was the fourth signatory of the Paris 
Accords), was noted by many observers.  The German Ambassador 
remarked that the RGC-dominated proceedings and 
self-congratulatory speeches did little to evoke the spirit 
of national reconciliation that was one of the key goals of 
the Paris Accords.  UN Human Rights Office director Margo 
Picken mentioned that the UN initially had discussed holding 
a real symposium on the Paris Accords and lessons learned 
fifteen years later, but the Cambodian government had 
resisted the proposal.  When the RGC realized that others 
were considering going ahead with 15-year anniversary 
conferences, the RGC enlisted the International Research 
Institute to organize a conference dominated by government 
speakers.  Interestingly, as the PM discussed his strategy 
for infiltrating the Khmer Rouge and convincing its 
commanders to defect to the government, FUNCINPEC Secretary 
General Nhek Bun Chhay was seated behind the PM as an invited 
guest.  The FUNCINPEC official, once a FUNCINPEC military 
leader who opposed the CPP during the 1997 coup, and later 
facilitated the reconciliation between Hun Sen and Prince 
Norodom Ranariddh following the 2003 elections, has most 
recently worked quietly with the PM to remove Ranariddh as 
head of FUNCINPEC.  The PM's win-win strategy against the 
Khmer Rouge is virtually the same one used successfully 
against FUNCINPEC today.  End Comment. 
MUSSOMELI