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U.. to press ASEAN on Cambodio, Bur
Subject: U.. to press ASEAN on Cambodio, Burma
U.S. to press ASEAN on Cambodia, Burma
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LOS ANGELES, July 23 (UPI) _ Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says
she is taking a tough
message on Cambodia and on Burma to a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders
in Malaysia later this
week.
Delivering a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, where
she made a brief stop
before heading to Kuala Lumpur Thursday, Albright noted that Cambodian
Foreign
Minister-designate Ung Huot pledged today to allow representatives from
the Association of
Southeast Nations to mediate the current crisis in Phnom Penh.
She appeared to welcome the first signs that second Prime Minister Hun
Sen, who seized power in a
bloody coup earlier this month that resulted in the forced exile of first
Prime Minister Prince
Norodom Ranariddh, may be willing to hold fresh elections and share
power.
But Albright, who referred to the foreign minister as a ``spokesman,''
says the United States wants
action not words and will press the seven- nation bloc to adopt a similar
policy.
Hun Sen initially rejected efforts by mediators from the so-called ASEAN
triumvirate _ the
Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand _ to broker a compromise that would
restore a power-sharing
agreement between the two political parties elected in 1995.
But Hun Sen appears to be relenting in the face of an aid cutoff from the
United States, Japan,
Australia and others and a decision by ASEAN to delay its entrance this
year into the regional
security group.
But ASEAN did not revoke a membership offer to Burma, where a military
junta has ruled the
nation with an iron fist for several years, despite American lobbying for
such a move.
(UPI, 23 July 1997)
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