World: Lon Nol and Sihanouk Speak Out

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Like Lon Nol, who perceives no alternative to continued conflict for Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk predicts a long and tragic struggle. In the October issue of the U.S. quarterly Foreign Affairs, Sihanouk, writing from his new home in Peking, said that he supported the Communist revolution, even though he realized that a prince could have no place in it.

Despite his dependence upon the Chinese and the fact that he sometimes has been styled "the Pink Prince," Sihanouk wrote: "I am not and will not become a Communist, for I disavow nothing of my religious beliefs or my nationalism." Nevertheless, he added, "with Lon Nol and the armed intervention of the foreign powers that support him, my homeland and my people have lost everything and are immersed in the worst catastrophe of their history. In these circumstances I can only hope for the total victory of the revolution, in which I shall certainly not have my place but which cannot but save my homeland and serve the deepest interests of the mass of the 'little' Khmer people."

Sihanouk sharply criticized the U.S. for supporting Lon Nol's regime. "The United States has valid reasons certainly for defending itself against the propagation of Communism in Asia and most particularly in Southeast Asia," declared Sihanouk. "But it would be pure hypocrisy to assert that the United States is defending the highest interests of the Indochinese people in preventing at all costs regimes like those of Lon Nol and of Nguyen Cao Ky from falling to Communism, using for that purpose bombs and napalm and an apocalyptic destruction of the countries and peoples concerned."

The best solution for Laos and Cambodia, Sihanouk argued, might be neutralization. "The more the United States steps up its armed interventions or those of its allies in these two countries, the less chance there will be of their being 'neutral' or 'neutralized' in the future. And the more the United States and its allies support the regime of Lon Nol and prevent the National United Front of Cambodia from unseating it, the more they will push this front, and in consequence the Khmer people and the Cambodia of tomorrow, into the Asian socialist camp."