DAP welcomes deferment of Cambodia’s entry into ASEAN and calls on United Nations to reconvene and restore the 1991 Paris Peace Accord process


Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang
(Petaling Jaya, Friday):
DAP welcomes the deferment of Cambodia’s entry into ASEAN as a result of the coup d’etat by Second Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Hun Sen’s stand that ASEAN and the international community should stay out of his country’s affairs should be rejected offhand as it was Hun Sen who had disrupted the 1991 Paris Peace Accord which resulted in the United Nations-brokered power agreement in Cambodia with Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen as co-prime ministers in a coalition government.

In the process, Hun Sen had violated an international agreement and it is the duty of the international community and in particular, the United Nations, to uphold the Paris Peace Accord.

For this reason, the United Nations should take immediate actions to reconvene and restore the Paris Peace Accord process.

Four years ago, Cambodia was hailed as a model for United Nations intervention in a strife-torn nation in averting a civil war. If the United Nations is now impotent and allows the Paris Peace Accord to be violated by Hun Sen with impunity, the United Nations would again establish its irrelevance in international diplomacy.

As a result of Hun Sen’s coup d’etat, it is not only the Paris Peace Accord which is on trial, the United Nations itself is also on trial - whether the US$3 billion UN international diplomatic efforts in Cambodia hailed one of the world body’s greatest success stories is to collapse to become one of its greatest failures.

(11/7/97)


*Lim Kit Siang - Malaysian Parliamentary Opposition Leader, Democratic Action Party Secretary-General & Member of Parliament for Tanjong