Monday, April 17, 2006

Sending Cambodian troops to Iraq: Much ado about ... nothing (except for Hun Sen's inability to distinguish a private exchange from official request)

Jeff Daigle (R) denied that the US officially requested Hun Sen to provide troops for assistance in Iraq. One has to assume that the ruckus created by Hun Sen and his government spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, was much ado about nothing, with the exception that it was most likely Hun Sen's inability to distinguish between a private exchange of opinion and a formal request. (Photo: US embassy, Cambodia)

US denies requesting Cambodian troops to assist in Iraq

15 April 2006
By Sok Serey
Radio Free Asia

Translated from Khmer by KI-Media

The spokesman for the US embassy in Cambodia had denied that the US embassy and the US government had officially or openly discussed the request for the Cambodian government to send troops to Iraq.

Jeff Daigle, the spokesman for the US embassy in Phnom Penh, told Radio Free Asia on Saturday that the embassy did not did not discuss [the request] at diplomatic level between the two governments. It was only an exchange of personal opinion between the US Ambassador and prime minister Hun Sen.

Recently, [Khieu Kanharith,] the government spokesman and advisor to prime minister Hun Sen had said that Mr. Joseph Mussomeli, the US ambassador to Cambodia, had met with prime minister Hun Sen at the beginning of the week regarding a request to send [Cambodian] troops to Iraq.

On Saturday, Khieu Kanharith said that since the request was made, prime minister Hun Sen had no reaction nor provide any answer to it yet.

Khieu Kanharith confirmed that this was a personal verbal request and there was no official request made from the US embassy.

The US and 50 allied countries led a war in 2003 to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein, accusing it of producing weapons of mass destruction.

Up to now, even after the fall of Saddam Hussein, violence against the invasion of the allies’ army still causes a large number of daily deaths.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Samdech Hun Sen is an insanely mad man! He is foolishly yelling like a little rough and tough boy, "No Khmer will be sent to war!"

This is very emotionally ashamed that Khmer governments are not only educated, but their brains are not moral nor conscientious,
which they can not tell the different between the cat and tiger!