LETTERS Absolute Pilger
Sir: William Shawcross's article (Wore bul- lets than ballots', 22 May) predictably mir- rors British and US policy on Cambodia. It contains familiar disinformation.
Shawcross writes that the UN operation has 'isolated' the Khmer Rouge and that the Chinese have 'apparently' stopped arm- ing them. This is false. Since the UN arrived in Cambodia, having brought back the Khmer Rouge as a 'legitimate faction', Pol Pot has doubled the territory he con- trols. Last week the UN chief in Cambodia, Yasushi Akashi, admitted that in the last year alone the Khmer Rouge had increased their strength by 50 per cent. Hasn't Shawcross heard?
As for the Chinese withdrawing their support, this is nonsense. Chinese policy on Cambodia is, as ever, operating on two lev- els. Last week a former senior Nato official (and ex MoD) confirmed that Pol Pot was still receiving arms 'from his traditional supplier'. Of course, western intelligence has long been aware of this; and so has Shawcross.
Shawcross says that I have 'propagated the. myth that Western policy and the whole UN peace plan has been designed to legit- imise the Khmer Rouge and help them back to power'. Last year the former direc- tor of the US State Department's Office for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Shep Low- man, admitted that from 1978 'the US countenanced the revival and building up of the Khmer Rouge's political and military capacity'. The UN operation in Cambodia is a UN/China exercise. Last October, the senior UN spokesman in Phnom Penh said, `The peace process was aimed at allowing the Khmer Rouge to gain respectability.'
So much for the 'myth'. I have never maintained that the UN operation was `designed' simply to help the Khmer Rouge back to power. What I and numerous oth- ers have done is to show irrefutable evi- dence that the US, China and their allies have restored and used the Khmer Rouge with the goal of installing a government in Phnom Penh made up of Khmer Rouge cohorts — such as the organisations of Prince Ranarridh and Son Sann — that will be anti-Vietnamese. This, they trust, will produce a familiar urban-dominated, IMF- indebted regime, not unlike the Lon Nol regime of the early 1970s. If Pol Pot later materialises, they can of course throw up their arms and say they tried to bring peace to this 'impossible country'.
The hopeful news this week is that the Hun Sen government — which, for all its faults, remains the only group committed to defeating those who put to death a fifth of the population — may well win the elec- tions. That will require a different western strategy, as the tragedy in Angola, imposed by the UN and the West, has vividly demonstrated.
John Pilger
46 Charlotte Street, London W1
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