Lon Nol and Sihanouk Speak Out

In the six months since Lon Nol and his fellow anti-Communists ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk from power, Cambodia has become the focal point of the Indochina conflict. Many of its towns have been savaged by fighting; half the country has fallen under Communist control and much of the remainder is contested. Recently, both Lon Nol and his predecessor have spoken out about the fate of their country.

The View from Phnom-Penh

Most critics of last spring's U.S. incursion into the Communist sanctuaries just inside Cambodia argue that the war has spread throughout the country as a result. Lon Nol disagrees. "The U.S. is not to blame for the fighting spreading into Cambodia," he told TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin. "The Communists had already moved westward out of the sanctuaries and were attacking us in various places long before the U.S. intervention in the border area."

Some of Lon Nol's aides would prefer that the U.S. maintain ground forces in Cambodia to support the country's army, which has grown from 35,000 to 140,000 since last March. Asked if he would welcome the return of U.S. ground troops, Lon Nol replied, "No, not yet—not as long as the war is going no worse than it is." So far, he sees no indication that the enemy has started to rebuild the sanctuaries along the South Viet Nam border. In the event of another buildup, he hopes U.S. troops will return and "destroy the sanctuaries once and for all."

Continued the Premier: "What we are asking for now is arms." So far, the U.S. has supplied about 50,000 old American rifles and 10,000 captured AK-47s. Washington has quadrupled its arms aid to $40 million, but Cambodians say they need five times that amount to equip and train a 200,000-man army by 1971. The U.S. is unwilling to comply. Lon Nol hopes that other nations will help, but additional aid to date has come only from Thailand, South Viet Nam and Australia, which donated 50 Land Rovers and radios and ponchos.

Lon Nol conceded that "the problem is not just to fight, but also to organize our country socially and politically on a war footing." In the next breath he vowed: "We are not going to allow the Communists to operate freely all over our country. We will kill all of them."

Toward that end, Lon Nol three weeks ago launched his government's first large-scale offensive military action since seizing power. A 5,000-man force, borne by trucks and civilian buses, set out to clear a 50-mile stretch of Route 6 to Kompong Thorn, whose overland links have been cut for months. Only 17 miles along Route 6, which stretches like a muddy arrow through the countryside's monsoon-flooded paddies, the force ran into heavy enemy resistance at the hamlet of Tang Kauk. After losing 19 dead and 124 wounded in an eight-hour firefight, the government forces fell back to regroup. Closing in, Communist sappers blew up bridges in front and behind the column. Temporarily marooned, the humbled task force retreated two miles. At week's end, as the task force repaired bridges and prepared for another push, enemy forces operating out of Tang Kauk opened strong attacks against the column.

And from Peking