Cambodia calls for UN support to end Thai border clashes over temple

Prime Minister Hun Sen says a UN military 'buffer zone' is needed to prevent fighting after five deaths in four days

Monday 7 February 2011

Mark Tran

guardian.co.uk

Cambodia has asked for an urgent UN security council meeting after Thai and Cambodian troops clashed for a fourth consecutive day over a disputed border area at an 11th-century temple.

Several hours of shelling and machine-gun fire subsided on Monday morning as both sides blamed each other for hostilities which have killed at least five people since Friday.

A Cambodian government spokesman, Phay Siphan, said fighting broke out again after halting around midnight. There was no immediate comment from the Thai authorities, but an Associated Press reporter in the area said the sound of gunfire and artillery could be heard.

The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, said the latest clash was sparked when Thai soldiers crossed the border in search of a dead comrade and Cambodians opened fire. Hun Sen, who has warned that the fighting poses a threat to regional stability, said: "We need the United Nations to send forces here and create a buffer zone to guarantee that there is no more fighting."

Hun Sen has sent a letter to the UN security council calling for an emergency meeting. Thailand's foreign ministry sent its own letter to the security council to formally protest against the "repeated and unprovoked armed attacks by Cambodian troops". In the past, Thailand has ruled out foreign involvement in its long-running dispute.

A statement from the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, on Sunday said he was "deeply concerned" by the fighting and urged both sides "to exercise maximum restraint".

Singapore's foreign ministry has called on the two neighbours to negotiate for their own sake and "the broader interests of Asean", the south-east Asian regional grouping.

The clashes have aroused nationalist passions in Thailand, ahead of elections scheduled for this year. The yellow-shirt faction, which helped bring the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to power in 2008, has been pressing him to take a tougher line against Cambodia.

Cambodian officials say a Thai artillery barrage on Sunday caused the partial collapse of the Preah Vihear temple, a UN world heritage site, but Thai officials have dismissed that account as propaganda. The international court of justice in 1962 awarded the temple to Cambodia, which uses a century-old French map as the basis for its territorial claims, but the ruling failed to determine ownership of the scrub next to it.

Built between the ninth and 11th centuries, Preah Vihear is dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva and revered partly for having one of the most stunning locations of all the temples constructed during the Khmer empire, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat. It sits on top of a 525-metre (1,700ft) cliff in the Dangrek mountains about 150 miles (240km) north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.