Views of the Clinton Administration and the U

Views of the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress

09/29/2000

by Naranhkiri Tith

from Jim Doran, Assistant Staff of Senate Foreign Relation Affairs:

Subj: Fwd: Hun To

Date: 9/29/00 1:11:45 PM Pacific Daylight Time

From: User344111@aol.com

To: thov.tan@wccpd.org

CC: PatTith@compuserve.com, theoul_t@hotmail.com, navite@hotmail.com, khmer_neakchea@yahoo.com, RYimsut@cs.com, SambatNY@aol.com, woody.oung@wccpd.org, veronicangi@dotplanet.com, JetKhmer2000@aol.com, vonie.hong@wccpd.org, sophah@yahoo.com, hchath@yahoo.com, odong@kalama.com

September 29, 2000

I am forwarding to you a letter that Jim Doran of the Senate Foreign Relations committee has sent me. This is a reply to Ambassador Kent Wiederman's (Current US Ambassador to Phnom Penh) letter to Al Santoli of the House International relations Committee, regarding Hun Sen's role in the current fiasco in Cambodia. It is clear that WCC's views are well defended by the Congress. But it is also clear that the Clinton administration on completely on the side of Hun Sen, using Sihanouk as the supporting and justifying crutch. Once again, WCC has been able to work silently but efficiently to defend democracy and justice in Cambodia. This also shows that talking to each other (among Cambodians) may make one feel good but it is empty rhetorics, as far as really helping Cambodia is concerned. I am also sending you separately, Wiederman's letter which is quite revealing on which side the Clinton administration really. Warm regards. N. Tith

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Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:51:26 -0400

From: Jim_Doran@foreign.senate.gov (Jim Doran)

Subject: Fwd:Re:RE: Hun To

To: user344111@aol.com

Message-id: <006DA3F9.C22126@foreign.senate.gov>

and my reply.....

Subject: Re:RE: Hun To

Author: Jim Doran

Date: 9/29/2000 11:48 AM

Ambassador Weidemann,

Your note typifies the intellectual and moral confusion of the Clinton administration's policies worldwide. It is why we now call Communist China a strategic partner and tilt toward them when they have a diplomatic spat with democratic Taiwan; it is why we have turned North Korea into the largest aid recipient in East Asia; it is why we do business as usual with the odious government of Vietnam; it is why we can't bring ourselves even to admit, let alone do anything about, the fact that the government of Laos killed 2 American citizens last year; it is why we can't even contemplate cutting aid to Russia even though its government has slaughtered tens of thousands of Chechens, is arming China, proliferating to Iran and holding an ill American citizen hostage; it is why we fete and glorify terrorists like Gerry Adams, Arafat and the mercifully late Assad; it is why we sent Elian back into slavery; it is why our president staged a handshake with Fidel; and it is of course why you and everyone else in this administration, including the CIA, has a fancy for Hun Sen's so-called abilities and such an obvious disdain for those Cambodians like Rainsy who are much closer to America's (real, i.e., pre-Clinton) values. Your unwillingness to pin the blame on Hun Sen for the grenade attack is outrageous. And lame. The well-known facts, outlined in my report, the most comprehensive on the topic in existence, leave room for doubt about Hun Sen's culpability only in the minds of the analytically challenged or those in a state of willful denial.

You ask whether or not taxpayer dollars should be going to the SRP. The answer is clearly yes. We SHOULD choose sides. There was once a time, the 1980s to be precise, when America had clarity of purpose (and a soul) and we openly and proudly chose sides all over the world. In Cambodia, taxpayer dollars went to oppose the Vietnamese and their lackey, Hun Sen. This worked to great effect, until we stupidly stopped the fighting before the job was done. Still, there was a chance in 1993, but the Clinton administration was too morally wayward, and too cowardly, to stand up to this 2-bit clown. Had men and women of mettle been in key positions at State, NSC and Embassy Phnom Penh in 1993, the little dictator with the glass eye would never have gotten away with stealing those elections, let alone the grenade attack, the 97 coup and the 98 fraud.

In response to your allusion to the fact that most of the rest of the international community accepted the 98 results and disagrees with Al: most of the rest of the world is run by dictators, Kent. Other democracies --- France, Germany, Japan, etc., aren't really noted historically for having much of a moral component to their foreign policy. It is why Albright said before our committee the other day (for the umpteenth time), that America is "the indispensable nation." Via your approach, America would not be indispensable, or even a world leader, but just a run-of-the-mill follower nation, kind of like Tony Blair's Britain. Pitifully, your approach better describes current US foreign policy than does Albright's glib phraseology.

But thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Many of us have been wondering who is the real you, and you have clarified everything.

Jim

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Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 16:10:41 EDT

Subject: Fwd: Hun To

To: thov.tan@wccpd.org

Ken Wiedeman’s letter 09/29/2000:

Subj: Fwd: weidemann

Date: 9/29/00 1:20:58 PM Pacific Daylight Time

From: User344111@aol.com

To: thov.tan@wccpd.org

CC: odong@kalama.com, hchath@yahoo.com, sophah@yahoo.com, Chanrithy@aol.com, vonie.hong@wccpd.org, JetKhmer2000@aol.com, kal.man@wccpd.org, veronicangi@dotplanet.com, SambatNY@aol.com, oak705@hotmail.com, woody.oung@wccpd.org, navite@hotmail.com, theoul_t@hotmail.com, PatTith@compuserve.com, khmer_neakchea@yahoo.com

September 29, 2000

Dear Thov:

Please, find attached a letter of Ambassador Kent Wiederman to Al Santoli that was forwarded to me by Jim Doran. It is crystal clear that Wiederman is completely on Hun Sen's side. It is also clear that Sihanouk and Ranariddh are pawns of Hun Sen as they were of the Khmer Rouge. It is a piece of evidence that I have been writing about a long time ago. Warm regards. N. Tith

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Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:50:49 -0400

From: Jim_Doran@foreign.senate.gov (Jim Doran)

Subject: weidemann

To: user344111@aol.com

Message-id: <009111B3.C22123@foreign.senate.gov>

in his own words........

Subject: RE: Hun To

Author: "Wiedemann; Kent M" <WiedemannKM@state.gov>

Date: 9/29/2000 6:30 AM

Dear Al,

You paint the State Department as a villain, unfairly. No one at State could make a move without blessing by the administration, starting with the White House. Under our constitution, Congress is free to summon us and grill us to a faretheewell on policy and actions. We passed the test for the majority in the Congress, because we followed a sensible course. We accepted the reconciliation that followed the bloodshed and high risk to the democracy experiment resulting from the July, '97 coup. I k now you preferred that there be no such reconciliation, but that Hun Sen be toppled instead. We have to work with the hand we're dealt. Hun Sen was not going to be overthrown, and he did win the '98 election. The main aim was to get a working coalition together, and the highly imperfect leadership of Cambodia refocused on the business of nation building.

The international community judged that there was only tragedy to be gained from the roiling instability that resulted from FUNCINPEC and SRP refusal to accept the '98 election results. Administration policy spotlighted flaws in the election that were glossed over by nearly the rest of the international community. Nonetheless, the elections were a rough guide to popular preferences, and not a travesty, just because Hun Sen won. As you know, if FUNCINPEC and SRP had had the political maturity to cooperate during the election, rather than belatedly join forces to oppose to CPP only after the election, THEY would have won with 60% of the vote, and THEY would be leading a coalition. The brouhaha over election fraud is overblown in terms of election outcome. Those facts represent an international consensus that the administration shares, but you don't. That puts you in a minority, Al. Under out system of democracy, you should bow to the majority, shouldn't you? You supported a petulant FUNCINPEC and SRP to create a stalemate after the elections that threatened political violence. What was the aim? Revolution? New elections? The only clear objective I can discern was the deposing of Hun Sen. The confrontation and instability in the streets of Phnom Penh in the fall of '98 were dangerous to life and limb of many Cambodians. Thank God a political deal was brokered by the King, with international backing, to bring a negotiated political platform as a basis for a working coalition. If you ask the average Cambodian today what is the most important development since 1997, he will say "peace and stability." The coalition deal reached in '98 made that possible, and was in the interests of the Cambodians.

I understand your antipathy for Hun Sen. In two years or so the people of Cambodia will have another shot at getting rid of him, if they wish to do so. In the meantime, let's work together to build up institutions and processes that will give them the best, fairest chance to express their will (not our will, but theirs).

"Teflon dictator": give me a break. Hun Sen is no dictator; he must balance a complex tapestry of pressures against him from all sides. And spare me the analogy with John Gotti; that serves your gangster analogy, but not the facts. Let's drop the emotion-laden polemics and ascerbic rhetoric and get on with building Cambodia's future. I suspect Hun Sen is not part of that future; don't get bogged down in the past, especially what happened on March 30, 1977. We likely will never know for sure who ordered that attack, just as last week's grenade attack on Street 178 that killed four will probably go unsolved--what is clear is that is was not political. FBI is hiding nothing; there is no conspiracy by the USG to hide facts. We can't do that without breaking the law. Do you honestly think that the Department of Justice, or the State Department have some kind of perverse motivation to break the law, so as to protect Hun Sen? He is not our protege; no one among Cambodia's leaders is, or should be. The fact is that the FBI has no compelling evidence to hang the grenade attack on any one suspect, let alone confirm your conviction that Hun Sen ordered it. The B-40 rocket attack against the convoy in Siem Reap in Sept. 1998 will likely also go unsolved, as will the question as to whether it was really an assassination attempt against Hun Sen. In the meantime, Sam Rainsy has managed, with help from his friends, to get just about every suspect the CPP or RGC has fingered spirited out of the country.

Impunity is the biggest issue here, in my opinion. For without rule of law, there is no guarantee of individual liberty and rights. No democracy can flourish. Just as I would agree with you that the KR tribunal should not take center stage, because it is an issue of the past, so too would I argue that the resolution of the grenade attack should take lower priority to solving the crimes of today in Cambodia. And there are plenty of them. Nonetheless, it is important to bring the KR leaders to justice. And it is plain wrong to assert that "everyone in Cambodia knows [the trial] will be a sham." If they think that, they are ignorant of the contents of the KR tribunal law and process negotiated so carefully by the UN. Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan et al. will be nailed. That would be the first time that Cambodians would witn ess leaders being called to account for outrageous abuses of power. That's worth doing, don't you think?

Rainsy and Saumura no longer have a lot of good reason to spend most of their time outside Cambodia. Political fear? Do they lack courage? Are they not willing to take risks for what they believe in and are trying to achieve, assuming their goal is Cambodia's development, and not simply the overthrow of long-time nemesis Hun Sen. They could have gained a lot ofpopular support if they'd been here to support flood victims rather than spending their time in Europe and the US, simply blaming the floods on Hun Sen's illegal logging. The sufferers want food and medicine, not questionable, politically motivated analyses from an expatriate, elite countryman sitting in Paris, Brussels, or wherever he is now.

RECOMMENDATION: To reach common cause on your recommendation to increase support to NGO's who do good work for Cambodians, in the civil society, humanitarian and long-term economic and social-development spheres. However, I am also convinced that we need to work selectively with those in the government, who will be whether Hun Sen is in charge or not, who need to learn the skills of providing services to their citizens. Selective assistance to the government will not aggrandize Hun Sen. Al, I don't consider you an "unenlightened obstructionist," but an obstructionist with a very conscious agenda. You want to do max damage to Hun Sen by cutting off all US aid to his government. I can certainly understand our refraining from funding political parties, but the government of one of the poorest, countries in the world, struggling to become a democracy, gets aid from other enlightened G-7 countries, and I don't understand why we don't put our money where our mouth is too regarding development of institutions that suppport rule of law, etc. You do support using US taxpayer dollars (including mine) to fund the Sam Rainsy Party, through IRI. I wonder at that; it feels very wrong to me. We Americans should not be picking horses in Cambodia's elections race, and betting on them with taxpayer dollars.

It's going to be a tough year for Cambodia. The floods have devastated the economy and already pitifully inadequate infrastructure. Economic hardships will increase, giving rise to still higher levels of political and social tension. And in this atmosphere, we have serious contention within every politicall party here, and looming commune elections. Demobilization is stalling, and other reforms will slow under new economic and political pressures. Let's work together to do some good, Al.

All the best, Kent

Kent Wiedemann

Ambassador

American Embassy

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

e-mail: wiedemannkm@state.gov

UNCLASSIFIED

This e-mail is unclassified based on the definitions provided in E.O. 12958

-----Original Message-----

From: Al703toli@aol.com [SMTP:Al703toli@aol.com]

Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 12:34 AM

To: Wiedemann, Kent M; PGrove@iri.org

Cc: jendrzm@hrw.org; Damour, Marie(EAP/BCLTV); Arvizu, Alex A; jim_doran@foreign-rel.senate.gov

Subject: Re: Hun To

Dear Kent:

I understand your frustration regarding the disenfranchised and obstinate political culture in Phnom Penh. With 32 years of experience [off and on] with Cambodia, starting at the time that Sihanouk, Hanoi and some members of the US government denied that the Noth Vietnamese Army had major forces in

Cambodia who were wreaking havoc in South Vietnam and those of us fighting along the border. I believe that some of the problems today stem from inequities within a semi-feudal Cambodian society, while other tragic developments in the political arena are driven by outside forces, such as the US State Department. Some thoughts:

1). Shot-gun marriage. The opportunity after the 1997 coup to bring together Cambodian parties against the brutal thugs of Hun Sen was squandered when Stanley Roth personally ordered Ranariddh back to Phnom Penh. That was a period when there was a glimmer that Ranariddh and other royalists would start to become a bit more humble -- despite the monies they had socked away in European accounts and which were not being used to help feed destitute ordinary Cambodians and Nhek Bun Chay's soldiers who put their lives on the line and remained loyal to a democratic process. Stanley Roth's pressure reinforced to Ranariddh that being a corrupt lackey of Hun Sen would be rewarded by the international community. In addition, Ranariddh's return and his acceptance of elections without a credible oversight process in place broke the trust between elected FUNCINPEC and SRP members of parliament who were struggling to get a credible electoral process in place.

2.) The grenade attack cover-up, supported by the State Department, of Hun Sen's role in the assasination attempt of Sam Rainsy and the lack of prosecution or disbandment of the murderous organizations and CPP officials involved in that atrocity, has kept Rainsy and Saumura in a state of fearing -- with credible reasoning -- that if they stay too long in Cambodia for any given period, that another assasination attempt will occur.

3). The intenationally-accepted atmosphere of impunity has further eroded democratic progress. The State Department's has emphasized a KR "tribunal" -- which everyone in Cambodia knows will be a political charade, especially with Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan living high on the hog in Pailin -- instead of demanding justice for the numerous murders that took place during the 1997 coup and during the subsequent post-election democracy demonstrations.

4). Hun Sen, the "Teflon Dictator." Excuse upon excuse by State Department on Hun Sen's background. Hun Sen was a mid-to-high level military officer in the Khmer Rouge from th early 1970s until the latter 1970s. This is the period when the KR committed the bulk of their atrocities. A soldier did not get promoted up the ladder of the KR command structure unless he was ruthless and his actions were sufficiently brutal. Period. To tacitly support his regime would be like the FBI saying about Mafia boss John Gotti: "Sure, he has been associated with criminal activity and his gang are a roogh crowd. But, on the other hand, he does a hell of a good job keeping peace in his areas of New York and New Jersey, better than any corrupt elected officials we've seen. And nobody can prove he personally committed any of the murders that his gang committed. Even when he was coming uop the ranks as a mafia "soldier." Hey, there are worse people we can think of. So, it's better that we support him for stability sake. We'll talk to the local law enforcement people to encourage them to be more reasonable."

In addtion, the Vietnamese occupation was also a vicious period of atrocities against non-communist Cambodians. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights documented in numerous reports the mass atrocities that were committed against Cambodians under the Viet ocupation, in which Hun Sen was a willing high-level puppert leader. A the same time, thousands of Vietnamese were perishing in reeducation camps and so-called New Economic Zone gulags in Vietnam under Hun Sen's Hanoi puppet masters.

5). Today there does not need to be mass killings by the communists. All it takes a a select number of assasinations or disappearances at the outset of an election campaign to inform a population that has suffered 30 years of ruthless political violence -- including Hun Sen's attacks on Buddhist temples in 1997 and 1998 -- that they better toe the CPP line -- or ELSE.

6). There is no law or accountability in the Huin Sen regime. That is why those of us in Congress who are likened to by Department of State as unenlightened obstructionists, continue to not pernmit US tax dollars to be wasted in the coffers of the Hun Sen regime. On the other hand, we have not objeced to US funding to NGOs to further a credible political and social evolution in Cambodia. Quite frankly, criminal activty is rife throughout the Hun Sen regime. If not Hun To, there are dozens of other high level officials that can be cited. Accuracy is important. But it means absolutely nothing if there is no accountability.

7). Vietnamese and Chinese influence. Both are bad. Both communist regimes do not want to see real democracy on their borders or within their own borders, despite historial rivalry and enmity between themselves. See Le Kha Phieu's recent statements about Beijing as Vietnam's model to preserve communism while receiving investment from the West. A democratic Vietnam could be an important ally to the US to stop Beijing's expansionist intentions. Our investing in a communist Viet regime -- without democratic reforms involved -- will harm our strategic interests.

The reason that none of us in this email group have given up on Cambodia is because we understand that there are a significant number of ordinary Cambodians who have courageously sought democracy through the ballot box -- and who seem to be ignored or exploited by the 3 major political-economic forces in Cambodia [the CPP, the FUNCINPEC and the Pailin KR]. They have also been betrayed by the US State Department and other members of the international "community."

RECOMMENDATION: Let's find common ground to increase support to the NGO's, both Cambodian and intenational, who will help bring social and political relief to the Cambodian people and will be accountable for the funds they receive. And stop wasting precious political capitol going around in circles on a KR tribunal, which under the current regime and impunity, has no chance of succeeding.