By STEVEN
ERLANGER, Special to The New York Times
Published: February 23, 1990
Several
thousand Vietnamese troops and military advisers returned to Cambodia last fall
after a much-publicized withdrawal and are helping the Cambodian Government to
defend two strategic cities from guerrilla attack, two senior Eastern European
diplomats say.
The
diplomats said the Government invited Vietnamese forces back in October, a
month after it announced their departure. The report indicates the precarious
position of Cambodia's Vietnamese-installed Government, which is under attack
from the guerrillas of the Khmer Rouge and other Cambodian forces opposed to
the Vietnamese influence.
Cambodian
and Vietnamese officials deny that there are Vietnamese troops in Cambodia or
that any returned after their withdrawal. China, the Khmer Rouge and the two
non-Communist Cambodian factions allied to the Khmer Rouge have asserted that
thousands of Vienamese troops never left.
Defensive
Lines in Northwest
But the
Vietnamese Ambassador here, Ngo Dien, said in an interview that Vietnamese
military advisers, whose numbers he did not disclose, had returned to Cambodia
at Phnom Penh's request to help design strategic defensive lines in the
northwest, fix tanks, trucks and armored cars and train officers and recruits
in tactics and artillery.
If Phnom
Penh risked its international credibility by secretly inviting Vietnamese
forces back, it clearly felt that the loss of additional territory to the
Cambodian insurgents would create unacceptable morale and political problems.
''On
secret military matters, if the Cambodians need some people to advise or do
something on a technical matter, we don't say no,'' Mr. Dien said.
Start of
Rainy Season
The two
Eastern European diplomats said all Vietnamese troops left Cambodia at the end
of September, as Hanoi promised. But in response to an urgent request from
Prime Minister Hun Sen after opposition advances and the fall of the gem-mining
town of Pailin on Oct. 24, they said, Vietnam agreed to send a special force as
large as 3,000 to help defend the perimeter of Battambang, Cambodia's
second-largest city. The Vietnamese began to arrive by helicopter on Oct. 29,
one of the diplomats said.
At least
5,000 Vietnamese troops are encamped around Battambang and Sisophon to insure
that these provincial capitals do not fall to the Khmer Rouge and its allied
non-Communist factions, the two Eastern European diplomats said.
One
diplomat said Mr. Hun Sen was told by Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach of
Vietnam at the end of December that Vietnamese troops would be withdrawn
irrevocably at the start of the rainy season, around the end of April.
A third
senior Eastern European diplomat said he had been told that at least 1,000
members of Vietnamese special forces entered Cambodia at the end of October,
but he said he did not know if they were still here. ''I know Vietnam wanted to
be clean before Jakarta,'' he said, referring to the conference in Indonesia
that is scheduled to begin later this month to discuss the future of Cambodia.
''By now they might be gone.''
Little
Fighting Believed
He said
that to his knowledge they had done little fighting. ''But the important thing
is that the Khmer Rouge knew that between them and Battambang, there were
Vietnamese,'' he said.
The
diplomat said it was difficult ''to draw a frontier between military advisers
and soldiers,'' but added that now ''the presence of every Vietnamese adviser,
specialist or even combatant is paid for by Cambodia.''
Asked why
he would disclose such sensitive and embarrassing information, a senior Eastern
European diplomat with long experience here said, ''I believe in the truth, and
with changes at home, it is easier to tell it.''
Another
Eastern European diplomat said Chinese, American and Southeast Asian aid was
continuing to go to the opposition, ''and it is no shame for Vietnam to respond
to a request for help.''
Denies
Troop Involvement
Dith
Munty, Cambodia's First Deputy Foreign Minister, said in an interview that
there were no Vietnamese troops or military advisers here. Advised of Mr.
Dien's comments, he then said that ''as far as I know, there are Vietnamese
military attaches and aides working in Cambodia,'' but no troops.
He said
statements that Vietnamese troops came to help in Battambang were not true and
''a fabrication.'' He said Cambodia welcomed international verification to
prove that no Vietnamese troops remained.
Chum Bun
Rong, a Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman, also said there were no
Vietnamese troops here. ''If we had them, the Khmer Rouge could not seize a
part of the country,'' he said. ''We welcome verification by an international
team even before a peace settlement. We don't want to be hostage to accusations
that poison the soil.''
Diplomats
and aid workers say the Khmer Rouge control large areas of the countryside in a
part circle beginning about 30 miles from the two city centers, where the three
lines of defensive perimeters end. The Khmer Rouge have cut the Phnom
Penh-Battambang rail line north of Pursat by blowing up two bridges, though
Cambodian officials say they are under repair. #12,000 Living on Streets While
the Khmer Rouge maintained they began a frontal attack on Battambang on Jan. 5
and set the city alight, in fact the attacks were mostly made with rockets.
Troops did not penetrate the city's suburbs.
Foreign
journalists were not allowed to visit Battambang until Jan. 23 and found the
city quiet. But they flew into the city on a special flight and were not
allowed to travel around the city, except to drive north to Sisophon and
Poipet, within the defensive perimeters.
Aid
workers and diplomats say that about 12,000 Cambodians displaced by the
fighting are now living on the streets of Battambang and that 30 people a day
reach the city hospital with gunshot wounds.
The
Vietnamese withdrawal last September followed a nearly 11-year occupation that
began with their expulsion in January 1979 of the Khmer Rouge Government, under
which more than a million Cambodians died. Before the withdrawal in September,
Vietnamese generals said they feared that Sisophon and Battambang might fall.
On Right
to Seek Assistance
If those
cities are taken, Cambodian officials privately say they fear a collapse of
already low army morale and a panic in Phnom Penh.
Early
last April, when Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos jointly announced that Vietnamese
troops would leave Cambodia at the end of September, the declaration included a
clause reserving to Cambodia the right to call on assistance again if needed.
Vietnamese
officials said in September that should such a request come, it would be judged
at the time. They said Hanoi had no interest in returning troops to Cambodia
but wished to concentrate on building relations with the West, the United
States in particular, which had made Vietnam's withdrawal a condition of
diplomatic and commercial relations.
But the
United States said that the unilateral Vietnamese withdrawal was not
sufficient, and that normalization could only come after a comprehensive
settlement in Cambodia. An American embargo on aid and trade to Vietnam
continues, and Washington has blocked loans to Vietnam from the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.
Shocked
by Pailin's Fall
The
Eastern European diplomats said Mr. Hun Sen's Government had been shocked by
the fall of Pailin. In Hanoi, Maj. Gen. Tran Cong Man confirmed in an interview
that Cambodian forces abandoned Pailin ''with no real reason'' when they
thought Khmer Rouge forces were about to surround them.
''If a
Vietnamese general had behaved like that, he would have been sentenced to
death,'' General Man said. He also confirmed that Cambodian soldiers left the
town of Svay Chek in northwest Cambodia to the Khmer People's National
Liberation Front, after successfully defending it for weeks, when a shell
happened to hit their commander's tent. When the Cambodian soldiers saw their
commander being evacuated on a stretcher, they followed his litter out of town,
General Man said.
A Khmer
Rouge attack on Battambang at the end of September had worried ''the military
lobby'' in the Phnom Penh Politburo, one Eastern European diplomat said. In
early October two members, Deputy Defense Minister Pol Saroeun and the former
Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Phou Thang, asked Mr. Hun Sen to
invite some Vietnamese troops back. He refused several times. But on Oct. 26,
after the panicky retreat from Pailin two days earlier, the diplomat said, Mr.
Hun Sen spoke with Defense Minister Le Duc Anh and asked for the return of
several thousand troops.
Mr. Anh
was furious, the diplomat said.
But after
two days of consultations in Hanoi, the diplomat said, Mr. Anh told Mr. Hun Sen
that the Vietnamese would send 3,000 special forces, elite career soldiers who
had not served in Cambodia, to help protect Battambang, but that they would be
placed far from the city center. They were said to have begun arriving the next
day, Oct. 29.
In Hanoi,
General Man also denied that Vietnamese fighting troops were in Cambodia, but
said that the Cambodian Army suffered from poor morale and weak leadership.
