Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 11, 1991 TAG: 9104110625
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
State Department officials described to a House subcommittee Wednesday new efforts to persuade Vietnam and other critics to accept the Cambodian peace formula backed by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
The scene shifted today to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Democrats have voiced impatience over the continuing bloodshed in Cambodia and lingering problems with Vietnam.
Unfinished business from the 1970s includes settling the status of about 1,700 American servicemen still unaccounted for in Indochina, and normalizing trade and credit with Vietnam, needed by Hanoi to replace economic help formerly provided by the Soviet Union and East European countries.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon told the House Asia-Pacific subcommittee that the Cambodian plan backed by the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China provides the best guarantee against a return to power by Cambodia's communist Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge are blamed for at least a million deaths during their 1975-78 rule over Cambodia. They are the strongest of three guerrilla forces battling the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh.
Many in Congress as well as Hanoi contend that including the Khmer Rouge in the peace process risks returning them to power.
But Solomon said Wednesday: "The only way the Khmer Rouge can win is if the settlement process is blocked and the military struggle continues." The United States is prepared to denounce the Khmer Rouge and their "genocidal violence" when the Paris conference on Cambodia reconvenes to approve the settlement, he said.
by CNB