Tuesday, 15 July 2008

Cambodian and Thai troops square up over disputed temple

Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday July 15, 2008

Tensions over a disputed border temple escalated today after a Cambodian official claimed 40 troops from neighbouring Thailand had crossed the frontier.

A Thai army chief immediately denied any incursion but said its soldiers had taken up positions near the 11th-century Hindu temple on Thailand's soil to protect its territory.

The Preah Vihear complex - long a source of bitter wrangling between the neighbours - was awarded world heritage site status by the UN's cultural organisation last week.

A Cambodian official claimed the troops entered the temple complex following the arrest of three Thai protesters who managed to sneak across the border.

Hang Soth, director general of the Cambodian authority responsible for the Preah Vihear complex, said the Thai troops had crossed the border near the temple site.

"Confrontation is occurring between Thai troops and our Cambodian troops," he said. "Our troops have been ordered to be on alert but not to shoot first."

He added that Cambodian guards had stopped the protesters - a Buddhist monk, another man and a woman - and were willing to hand them back immediately. Cambodia closed the temple to visitors from Thailand late last month.

The festering row over the site was reignited after the former Thai foreign minister Noppodol Pattama backed the Cambodian application for world heritage listing.

He was forced to step down after a Thai constitutional court ruled he had overstepped his authority by offering the government's backing without consulting parliament.

Anti-government protesters, who have been staging demonstrations in Bangkok for weeks, seized upon the dispute as yet another means to attack the People Power party coalition.

The protesters claimed the prime minister Samak Sundarvej's government had lent support to Phnom Penh's listing application in return for business concessions in Cambodia for the ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The dispute between Thailand and Cambodia centres on land around the temple complex, which is situated on a cliff-top. Because of the difficult terrain, access for visitors is vastly easier from the Thai side.

Thai troops occupied the temple complex in 1954 after the withdrawal of French troops from Cambodia. Phnom Penh protested to the international court of justice in The Hague in 1959, prompting a severing of diplomatic relations and threats of force by both sides.

But in 1962 the international court ruled that the temple, whose Hindu roots echo the more famous Angkor complex, lay on Cambodian soil, to the anger of many Thais.

The fragile nature of relations between the neighbours was reflected in 2003 when anti-Thai riots erupted in Phnom Penh. Bangkok's embassy there was set on fire after a Thai actress was falsely reported to have said that Angkor Wat still belonged to Thailand.

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