The Joint International Observation Group (JIOG) also decided that was not the correct forum - at that time - to discuss electoral problems such as widespread intimidation with Cambodian authorities.

JIOG demanded the report be rewritten to contain "only technical data", the  documents reveal, and also that all future observers' reports be purely technical. The problem, according to some of those involved, was procedural.

Foreign ambassadors who sit on the JIOG were surprised to be given suggestions to talk with the government when all they thought they were going to get was a technical report. The foreign ambassadors prompted the rewrite, sources said, adding that French Ambassador Gildas Le Lidec was particularly critical.

 JIOG - a grouping of 34 foreign observer missions - will make what should amount to the most comprehensive foreign judgment of the election. Its members include the heads of the European Union (EU), ASEAN and bilateral observer missions.

The eight-page report, presented to JIOG by the UN Electoral Assistance Secretariat (EAS) - the body coordinating the observation missions - was written by 56 observers from the United States, Australia, Canada and the EU. It also contained information from teams working with the UN secretary-general's special representative and the UN Center for Human Rights.

The Post has obtained copies of the report and minutes of the JIOG meeting.

 The report was "innocuous enough... with little more [information] that you  could get from the Post, The Cambodia Daily and the wires," said one source. It was also highly critical of Second Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP).

The observers' report blamed CPP officials for intimidating voters and opposition parties and stacking electoral commissions - issues that affected voters' perception of ballot secrecy.

It also contained information on voter education, access to media, freedom of speech and assembly and technical preparation for the polls. The report suggested that JIOG:

Le Lidec and US Ambassador Kenneth Quinn said that it was not the observers' job to suggest recommendations the JIOG might make to the government.

The minutes of the meeting leaked to the Post describe the scene: "Some delegations expressed surprise at such a report and felt that it was not in  the EAS mandate to provide political analysis of the electoral process. The content of the report was too political and based too much on human rights issues. Other delegations felt that information sharing was important."

The report was finally quashed and JIOG decided:

Sources told the Post that because the minutes of the meeting were later disapproved by JIOG as inaccurate and misleading, a decision was made not to take any minutes of future meetings. Instead there will only be a chairman's summary.

Although EU observer chief Sven Linder is also chairman of the JIOG, he was  not present at the meeting to chair the debate.

The EAS report has been re-written and circulated to JIOG members. It now carries no suggestions or recommendations, nor does it include any information from UN rights teams - information that the June 29 JIOG meeting strongly objected to.

One source said the new report was "bland", although it still contained some critique of human rights issues "because even JIOG observers can't help but notice and report what's going on".

JIOG has a UN mandate to make "private démarches" to the NEC and the Cambodian government to help give "a collective assessment" of the electoral process, including recommendations on how it could be improved.

The UN mandate also allows JIOG to go public with its findings. JIOG has decided to make one public statement before polling day and a final one after, thereby honoring its UN mandate, but critics are not satisfied.

They say JIOG was wrong to have ditched the option to talk to the NEC and the government, and that it was a decision its ambassador members should not have been allowed to instigate.

One UN official, who would not be named, said JIOG had proved itself flawed. "Does it think things are so good here that it doesn't need to talk  to the government?" he said. "Has it found nothing it wants to bring up with the NEC?"

A senior donor official indicated to the Post that because of the "fluid" nature of JIOG's membership it could at any time decide to ignore the June 29 decision and go ahead with representations to the Cambodian government.

Some sources said that Le Lidec, Quinn and other ambassadors such as George  Edgar (UK) - who had all been invited to attend JIOG meetings - had been put in a situation where they could not accept the report, as representatives of their governments, without instruction.

The ambassadors were only attending JIOG because the chiefs of their countries' short-term observer missions had not yet arrived in Cambodia, said one source.

He said that if JIOG's "temporary" ambassadorial members had acted on the report's recommendations it would have been "a sure way" of tainting the process.

Ambassadors could best make government representations through a group like  "Friends of Cambodia", not JIOG, he said. When chiefs of observer missions  arrived to take up JIOG positions instead of their ambassadors "then the JIOG can make all the démarches to the government it wants," he said. A spokesman for the US Embassy said that Quinn already made a similar point  at the meeting.

Another source said that "if [it is being implied] that the JIOG is not concerned about human rights then that's wrong. It certainly is [concerned]. The decisions were just a procedural thing".

But one critic privy to the meeting said that Le Lidec, Quinn and Edgar, among others, should have excused themselves from the meeting once they saw  the report and felt that they were compromised to accept it. Instead, Le Lidec began arguing and driving decisions on behalf of JIOG that, under new  membership, the group may later have to alter.

The United States is now only nominally part of the group. On July 9 it announced it would not be associated with JIOG's judgment of the election. Diplomats say the US - which from Washington at least has been a critic of Cambodia's political climate over the past year - is worried that JIOG's statement has been predetermined as favorable, and that the US wants the right to make its own call. The results of JIOG's June 29 meeting may only strengthen that perception, say critics.

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 7/14, July 17 - 23, 1998