LETTERS Jane knows best
Sir: Do we take Derek Tonkin seriously? As he's an unofficial voice of the Foreign Office, I suppose we have to. In his latest letter (4 May) Tonkin still can't get it right about Cambodia, let alone his time as ambassador to Thailand, which makes us wonder charitably what some ambassadors do. In his previous 'studiously factual analysis,' in The Spectator, Tonkin cont- rived both a sequence and voice-over commentary that never appeared and was never heard in our film, Cambodia: The Betrayal. He repeats this in his latest letter, trying to prove perhaps that if you believe the same nonsense over and again it may be believed, or even come true.
For the record once again, the Singapo- rean delegate to the UN was not shown in our film shaking hands with anyone. She was shown leading delegates to shake hands with and pay their respects to Pol Pot's man at the UN and his ally, Son Sann. She didn't turn away from Pol Pot's man 'looking as black as thunder,' but chatted with him.
Tonkin's piece de resistance, however, is when he rises to Chris Mullin's challenge to deny that British soldiers based in Thailand have been training Khmer Terrorists. The following is from Jane's Defence Weekly of 30 September, 1989: 'UK TRAINED CAMBODIAN GUERRILLAS.'
The report said that Britain has been training Cambodian guerrillas 'at secret bases in Thailand for more than four years'. The instructors were 'all serving UK military personnel, all veterans of the Falklands conflict, led by a captain'.
One result of the British training, said Jane's, was 'the creation of a 250-man KPNLAF sabotage battalion [whose] members were taught how to attack in- stallations such as bridges, railway lines, radar stations, power lines and sub- stations. Their first operations were con- ducted in Cambodia's Siem Reap province in August, 1986'. Jane's Defence Weekly is something of a 'Bible' in Whitehall.
Then there is the Independent, which reported that 'Whitehall sources confirm' that the British Cambodia operation began in 1985 and 'involved members of the SAS Training Wing, which contains many of the regiment's most experienced soldiers'. Then there is the Sunday Telegraph, which reported that 'reliable diplomatic sources confirm that seven-man British Army teams, provided by the SAS training wing at Hereford and commanded by an SAS captain, conducted a series of tactics and demolition courses on the Thai/Cambodian border . . • There are numerous other established sources, not least the Foreign Office itself. Hence the headline: 'WALDEGRAVE MAKES TACIT ADMISSION OF SAS LINK TO KHMER ROUGE' (Independent, 14 November, 1989). William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, effectively admitted to Gerald Kaufman in Parliament that the SAS were training those allied with Pol Pot's genocidal army.
What is worrying about Derek Tonkin is that he represented the British people in Thailand during the years that British troops were training those engaged in terrorist activities against the neighbouring Cambodian people. And writing disin- genuous letters won't alter that fact.
Central Independent Television, 40 Charlotte Street, London W1
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