America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

If nothing else, the month-long international conference in Paris dramatizes the importance and complexity of events in Cambodia. After more than ten years of occupation, Vietnamese troops are due to pull out next month. At issue in Paris is what happens next -- a new round of civil war or a coalition government? And should a coalition include the Khmer Rouge, the murderous ultra-Maoists whom the Vietnamese drove into the jungle?

The Khmer Rouge's principal backer is China. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who also relies on Chinese patronage, is the overall leader of the resistance and likely to head any coalition. Although the Khmer Rouge slaughtered 40 of his relatives, Sihanouk, like the U.S., has given priority to getting the Vietnamese out of Phnom Penh, even if it means letting some Khmer Rouge back in. Also like the U.S., he is hoping it will be easier to neutralize the Khmer Rouge if some of them are running ministries rather than assassinating ministers.

Hun Sen, the Prime Minister of the Vietnamese-sponsored regime, is ready to share power with Sihanouk but not with the Khmer Rouge -- and for good reason: whether or not they are allowed into a coalition, they will certainly try to keep their camps and arms caches. Some level of fighting would go on. It is a question of whether the Khmer Rouge are granted government portfolios and political legitimacy along with their military strength. Attending the Paris conference last week, Secretary of State James Baker said, "The United States strongly believes that the Khmer Rouge should play no role in Cambodia's future." That statement was an improvement on one he made in April, when he accepted the inclusion of the Khmer Rouge in a coalition as "a fact of life." Last week he went on to say that American support for a new Cambodian government "will directly and inversely depend on the extent of Khmer Rouge participation."

Unfortunately Baker undercut the logic of his new position by saying that if Sihanouk insists on maintaining his unholy alliance with the Khmer Rouge, the U.S. will go along. Sihanouk, in turn, says he will continue to reserve a place for the Khmer Rouge in the coalition as long as the Chinese insist on it. So on this key issue, Washington is taking its lead from Beijing. The aging tyrants responsible for the massacre in Tiananmen Square are, with American acquiescence, bestowing respectability on the butchers responsible for the killing fields.

It should be the other way around. The Bush Administration should be trying harder to get China -- itself in need of some respectability these days -- to abandon its most disgraceful clients. The U.S. should also withhold aid to Sihanouk until he breaks with the Khmer Rouge entirely. Perhaps, deprived of all international tolerance, they will suffer defeats, lose their ability to recruit troops and fade into history.

Baker implied that Hun Sen and his Vietnamese mentors are no better than the Khmer Rouge. The Secretary of State warned that the Cambodian people may "be forced to choose between being eaten by a tiger or devoured by a crocodile." But this parallel does not stand up. Hun Sen has been rebuilding the country that the Khmer Rouge destroyed. If it ever comes to a hard choice between him and the Khmer Rouge, as indeed it might, the Cambodian people would without doubt choose Hun Sen. So should the U.S.