The Paris conference on Cambodia, 1989

Abstract

When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975, it launched repeated attacks on Vietnam. After the Khmer Rouge refused to accept negotiations or mediation to stop the border war, Hanoi sent troops into Cambodia in December 1978 to dislodge Pol Pot from power. In 1979 Hanoi declared its intention to withdraw its troops from the territory of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) as soon as the new regime had an army to defend itself. Lacking a trained combat-age population in a country where two-thirds of the survivors of Khmer Rouge genocide were female, the building of a new armed force took some time. In 1985 Hanoi announced that it would withdraw unilaterally by 1990. Then from 1986 to 1989 negotiations were underway to resolve the decade-long Cambodian civil war. The Jakarta Informal Meetings of July 1988 and February 1989 set the stage by inviting the four warring Cambodian factions, the two other Indochinese countries, and the six members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to hear one another's views in an atmosphere where there was no pressure for a decision but instead an opportunity to share and to build consensus. On 5 April 1989, Vietnam announced that it would withdraw its combat forces by the end of September 1989. France then responded to Prince Sihanouk's request to host an international conference in Paris with wide representation in order to draw up an agreement for a new Cambodia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Haas

This paper has been adapted especially for BCAS from the author's book Genocide by Proxy: Cambodia Pawn on a Superpower Chessboard (New York: Praeger, forthcoming 1991). The paper was originally delivered at the annual conference of the Association for Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom, University of Kent, Canterbury, 26 March 1990.