Message

Summary

This timely book commemorates the Twentieth Anniversary of the October 1991 Paris Peace Agreement on Cambodia. The Paris Conference on Cambodia itself was the high-water achievement and culmination of a long and determined campaign by the ASEAN countries to bring about a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the Cambodian conflict. It succeeded where previous attempts had failed, primarily because the international, regional and domestic Cambodian parties were now supportive of a negotiated peace settlement. Various papers in this book describe how the various factors fell into place, which enabled the many participants to be ready to accept an UN-organized, Permanent Five UNSC members-brokered, Cambodian factions-accepted peace settlement.

Cambodia was one of the first major challenges confronting the decade old ASEAN, to test how it would face up to the question of whether ASEAN could countenance the overthrow of a small state in its region by armed force. What about its hallowed principles, such as the non-use of force to settle disputes; of respect for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of all states; of the use of consultation, consensus and dialogue to settle disputes? It was because of these deeply-held principles that ASEAN decided to oppose the foreign invasion and occupation of Cambodia for over a decade, until the conditions were ripe for a peaceful settlement.

Now that the UNTAC PKO and UN-supervised general elections of 1993 have peacefully come and gone, key questions remain, such as: what is the state of Cambodia today, eighteen years later, and after millions of dollars in ODA by various countries and generous assistance by numerous NGOs have been provided to Cambodia to recover and reconstruct its economy and society? What will be the future of Cambodia in the 21st Century? The various papers in this volume seek to address these complex issues of socio-economic development, of human resource development, of good governance, and of Cambodia's foreign relations. The story of the liberation and reconstruction of Cambodia is one of the noblest achievements of the international community and one of ASEAN's finest successes, and it is a story well told within this book.

That is not to say, however, that there are no difficulties or that all sides are happy with the current situation within the Kingdom of Cambodia.