Clinton says wants to address Cambodia's U.S. debt

via CAAI

By Arshad Mohammed Arshad Mohammed – Mon Nov 1, 2010

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday she wanted to address Cambodia's $445 million debt to the United States that dates back to the 1970s and proposed sending a U.S. team to open discussions.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has called for the United States to forgive what he has called the "dirty debt" built up by the Lon Nol military government that came to power in a 1970 coup backed by Washington.

"When you have a debt like this one that does go back to the 1970s, to the Lon Nol government, then you know that it is something that carries not only financial implications but political and strategic implications as well," Clinton told Cambodian students in Phnom Penh.

Saying she would raise the issue in her discussions with Hun Sen on Monday, Clinton said if the Cambodian government were willing, she would send a U.S. team of experts to look at how to handle the issue.

"You could have some repayment, you could have debt for nature, you could have debt for education. There are things that the government of Cambodia could do that would satisfy the need to demonstrate some level of accountability but, more importantly, to invest those funds in the needs of the people of Cambodia," she added.

While she did not elaborate, a U.S. official said one approach might be for the United States to allow Cambodia to retire some of the debt by spending corresponding sums on educational and environmental projects.

Two students asked Clinton about the debt built up under Lon Nol, who was toppled in 1975 by the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime under which an estimated 1.7 million people died in less than four years.

DISTURBING

The Khmer Rouge period plunged Cambodia into decades of poverty and political instability.

Clinton began her visit to the Cambodian capital with a tour of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a Khmer Rouge prison and torture center known as S-21 where at least 14,000 Cambodians were forced to confess to various crimes against the regime and then taken away to be killed.

In July, the prison's former chief, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, became the first Khmer Rouge commander to be convicted and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, although he is only likely to serve about half of that.

Saying she found the visit profoundly disturbing, Clinton told students she was impressed by the country's ability to grapple with its past.

"In memory of the tragic suffering of the people of Cambodia and in hope that there will be a future of peace, prosperity and greater awareness of all that needs to be done to move the country forward, including trials, accountability and reconciliation," she wrote in the museum's visitor book.

"May God bless all who lost their lives and their families and all Cambodians who want to make a difference for the next generation," she added.

(Editing by Alan Raybould)