Vietnam confesses to inteference into Cambodia's future ... Cambodia's cuurent development is not due to Hun Xhen but due to the Viets

Praise for VN expert help in Cambodia

July, 19 2011
Vietnam News (Hanoi)

HA NOI — Many Vietnamese experts helped the Cambodian revolution, setting a friendly way for future generations to continue, said State President Nguyen Minh Triet yesterday.

Triet was addressing a delegation from the Liaison Committee for Former Vietnamese Experts in Cambodia in Ha Noi yesterday.

The State leader said Cambodia's current development achievements was influenced by the contributions of the former experts and the sacrifices made by Vietnamese soldiers.

The President said that after assisting the Cambodian people to liberate their country in 1979, the Vietnamese Party and State sent tens of thousands of Vietnamese experts in all fields to Cambodia to help the country reduce poverty and epidemics.

Explosives experts defuse bombs in Cambodian capital

Sunday, July 29, 2007
The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Explosives experts prevented homemade bombs from going off on Sunday at a controversial monument in the heart of the Cambodian capital, officials said.

The bombs, a mixture of TNT and fertilizer packed in three buckets, were planted at a monument dedicated to Vietnamese soldiers who invaded Cambodia to topple the Khmer Rouge in 1979.

The monument is located in a park about 500 meters (yards) from the southern wall of the Royal Palace, where King Norodom Sihamoni and his parents live.

"If we had not succeeded in destroying the bombs, that monument would have collapsed," Hok Lundy, Cambodia's national police chief, told reporters.

The monument was erected by a communist Cambodian government nearly 20 years ago.

Political opponents of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was also prime minister of the Vietnamese-installed government, view the monument as a symbol of a decade-long occupation of Cambodia by Vietnamese troops following the invasion.

Suon Rindy, deputy cabinet chief of the Phnom Penh Municipality, called the failed bomb attack an "act of sabotage that was aimed at stirring up the political climate" in Cambodia.

He declined to speculate on the motives behind the act, citing an ongoing investigation.

Protesters partially destroyed it during a postelection protest in 1998.

The monument was restored later, and Vietnamese leaders often go to pay respects to their fallen soldiers during visits to Cambodia.

"Since the bombs were planted at the monument, they were clearly intended to destroy it. If the plotters just wanted to create some noise, they would not have had to place the bombs here," said Touch Naroth, the capital's police chief.

He said police flocked to the site after the fuse of one of the bombs exploded at around 5:30 a.m. (0030 GMT), but it failed to set off the full blast.

Mine-clearers used ropes to tie up the explosives and dragged them off the middle platform of the monument to the ground. The fuse for the second bomb went off but caused no damage or injury.

They later set up a sandbagged bunker to detonate the third and last bomb.