PHNOM PENH/BANGKOK, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- As of Friday, two days have passed without gunshots disturbing the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple after the Feb. 4-7 bloody clashes between Cambodian and Thai troops, but there's a fear that real peace is still far out of reach in the disputed border area.
The skirmishes, in which heavy weapons including rockets, machine guns, mortars and artillery were resorted to, have reportedly killed at least eight Cambodian and three Thai soldiers, wounding many more, and compelling tens of thousands of villagers to flee home for shelters.
Witnesses said damage was done to the 900-year-old temple, a World Heritage site, and that although firing had stopped for two days, additional Thai tanks were seen en route to the contested areas, and Cambodia's military deployment near the frontier was not lessened.
The border between Thailand and Cambodia has never been completely demarcated. Although the International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that the temple itself belonged to Cambodia, the row over the 4.6-square-km territory around the temple has never been resolved.
As the international community urges both sides to display restraint and calls for a peaceful solution to their age-old territorial dispute, the two neighbors are even at odds over the way of working the matter out.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen favors the United Nations Security Council's decision to hold a meeting on Feb. 14 to discuss the Cambodian-Thai border dispute.
No comments:
Post a Comment