When the War Was Over (91 page)

But there was also the skewed wealth that comes from the black-market trade with flashy cars and motorcycles, and restaurants filled with fat businessmen and women, vividly contrasting with the vast majority of Cambodians who were happy to simply be better dressed and fed. In the countryside, improvement was very slow, measured in the number of houses
with new tile roofs or fresh thatch, not in any new businesses or greatly improved harvests. Some villages were able to dig wells, and farmers included pigs in their livestock as well as chickens. One bonus was a new law allowing families to own their own farms and reap the rewards of their labor and whatever investment they made in improving their land. As Hun Sen bragged that year, “we are planting sugar palm trees again for the first time in ten years—on the levees around the rice fields.”

Yet the overseas Cambodians who fled after 1975 and began to return to visit around 1986 were appalled at the poverty. Farming families, who would have been middle class in other countries, still depended not only on their rice harvest but on tapping sugar palms, cultivating spices like pepper and sesame, weaving cloth from cotton or silk, making charcoal, or even driving a cycle rickshaw in towns to earn enough for themselves.

Most of all, the country had the feel of a fossil captured in amber. It was both diminished and beguiling for its lack of modernity. With communist-style surveillance less prevalent for most people outside the political world, it was possible for them to lead a normal life, more deeply rooted in agriculture than the life that could be found in the hustle and bustle of Thailand, Malaysia, or Singapore. Phnom Penh's river port was still filled with small ships and fishing boats, not modern cement hotels. Country roads were clogged with bullock carts and the tallest buildings were Buddhist temples, many under renovation now that the government was allowing the revival of Buddhism.

Hun Sen oversaw the changes, the ipso facto leader of Cambodia. As the country's future became a central international issue, most diplomats ignored the nominal head, President Heng Samrin, who had once been Hun Sen's superior in the Eastern Zone during the Khmer Rouge period. Again Hun Sen was lucky in his competitors. Compared to Heng Samrin, Hun Sen was a vibrant modern politician. He never dropped his ingrained obsession with control, at the minimum fostered by his communist coming-ofage, but his was a less dogmatic hand. If someone could help him enhance his power, he was happy to have him onboard, whether he was a prince or a peasant, an entrepreneur or a soldier. He enjoyed traveling around the country like a local politician, talking up farmers and inaugurating new shelters. While he showed early signs of corruption, requiring kickbacks or gifts for any government approval, he never hid his love for a better life. He exhorted his fellow Cambodians to live well, too, and take advantage of the ever so slow opening of the country.

In the international arena, Hun Sen had another advantage. Unlike Sihanouk, he had long ago split from Pol Pot. Also, unlike Sihanouk, he had
never been an important personality in Pol Pot's party, army, or government. It was unlikely that Pol Pot or any other top Khmer Rouge official had ever heard of him until he came to power with the Vietnamese army. This allowed him to demand that he negotiate with the prince and the prince alone. Hun Sen argued that he had “sacrificed so much” to prevent the Khmer Rouge from coming back, he need not deal with them. Gorbachev could promise that the Khmer Rouge would ultimately be included in negotiations, but Hun Sen wanted them barred from his discussions with the prince for fear they would try to return to power that way “under Sihanouk's skirts.”

On July 21, just to make sure the world understood what he was up to in Cambodia, Gorbachev invited the editor of a leading Indonesian newspaper to Moscow for a rare exclusive interview. After repeating his intention to withdraw all Soviet troops from Afghanistan in “a short time frame,” Gorbachev went on to describe the “promising indications of a possible settlement” in Cambodia.

“A specific date for the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops has been announced and we are confident it will be respected,” he said. “The most important thing is that the idea of national reconciliation slowly but surely is making headway.”

One of the great cold war logjams was breaking. Now it was a race to see which country could actually get Sihanouk and Hun Sen together. Diplomats literally traveled around the world to be part of what most presumed would be an historic encounter between Prince Sihanouk and Prime Minister Hun Sen that would settle the violent Cambodian problem. The Senegalese diplomat who chaired the now nearly irrelevant UN Permanent International Conference on Cambodia flew to Bangkok in June, then on to Helsinki and Vienna, all in the name of setting up an encounter. An Indonesian diplomat in North Korea had the same goal when meeting Sihanouk there. So, too, did an Austrian diplomat who traveled to Pyongyang to convince Sihanouk to take part in a four-way conversation with all the Cambodian factions. The Indonesians wanted the breakthrough to take place in Jakarta. The Austrian thought Vienna the perfect site.

A Japanese diplomat went to Hanoi to arrange a Cambodian meeting under Japanese sponsorship. And at the United Nations, the noncommunist resistance leader Son Sann tried to hold off a meeting between Hun Sen and Sihanouk by offering to allow the government in Phnom Penh to become part of a coalition with the resistance—an offer so strange it was never answered.

In this rarefied competition, diplomats and politicians on both sides of the East-West divide came to the same conclusion: that a unique opportunity was before them. A generation raised on containing the cold war now saw the opening to end it. In Asia, the cold war had been reduced to getting China and the Soviet Union on good terms, which would then allow all countries to open relations and bring about the thaw that would open borders for the first time since the colonial era. To bring Beijing and Moscow together required getting Vietnam out of Cambodia and convincing the Cambodians that they should stop fighting among themselves. This became the sine qua non of cold war diplomacy, and everyone wanted to be a player.

Through this flurry of diplomacy there was almost no word from the United States or China. The two nations who effectively set the rules for the war eight years earlier were waiting in the wings. The United States preferred to say it was following the lead of the Southeast Asian nations, shorthand for refusing to stick out its neck. China was waiting for more concessions from Vietnam.

After several meetings in Vietnam and Bangkok, the states of Indochina and ASEAN agreed it was time to sit down and discuss Cambodia informally. They would call it a Joint Informal Meeting, or JIM. In September, China's foreign minister met with Shevardnadze on Cambodia, and within a month China's ambassador to Thailand announced his country approved of Sihanouk meeting Hun Sen.

The real negotiations were taking place outside all the expensive public diplomacy. Even behind the scenes there were two levels of communications. The first was the essential diplomatic channel. Sihanouk worked with Martin and the French. Hun Sen worked through Rogachev and the Soviets. Sihanouk had already decided the meeting would take place in France and expected Martin to take care of the logistics, including the coordination with the Soviets and Vietnamese. “When Rogachev first came to us to consult about Prince Sihanouk, I told him we wanted Sihanouk out of China, out of the shadow of China, in a neutral country like France,” Martin said.

Rogachev, for his part, was optimistic since not only had Hun Sen adopted a public stance for national reconciliation, as Shevardnadze had asked him, but the Vietnamese had joined in and made an overture toward Sihanouk. It was an important turnaround since just weeks before, Cambodians and Vietnamese “were criticizing the prince rather strongly,” Rogachev said. “They didn't seriously believe in the possibility of a peaceful solution.”

Hun Sen asked the Soviets to arrange his visit to Paris, and on November 18, 1987, he announced that he would visit Sihanouk in France the next
month. That gave Rogachev and Martin less than one month to prepare for the December 2 meeting at a château-hotel in the French champagne country at Fere-en-Tardenois. “We gave him an airplane,” Rogachev said straight-faced. “France paid for everything else. It was a kind of cooperation with France.”

Martin remembers that the Soviets were worried about “the caprices of Sihanouk,” and Rogachev sent his top assistant to Paris to shadow the talks. From that moment on, Martin said “my contacts with the Soviets were far more important that the contacts with the Vietnamese.”

There was a personal line of communication as well, outside the official channels since there was no correct, diplomatic way for the two Cambodian leaders to converse with each other. To make it appear as if these two men were organizing their own meeting, they wrote to each other in short telegram messages and sent them to the Paris apartment of Jean Jacques Galabru, a former French diplomat, and his Cambodian wife, Khek, whose father had a long history with the Cambodian royal family and Sihanouk.

The Galabrus were a natural choice for this role. Mrs. Galabru had known Sihanouk most of her life. Her father, Pung Penh Cheng, had worked with the prince until 1982 and then broke with him because Sihanouk joined the coalition with the Khmer Rouge. Khek had met Hun Sen one year later in Angola at the 1983 summit of nonaligned nations, when her husband was the French ambassador to that country. Hun Sen had sought her out and then pleaded his case to both her and her husband at a long evening meeting that convinced both of the Galabrus that Hun Sen “was not a Vietnamese puppet,” Mrs. Galabru said. “He was a patriot. I told him so and said that before I had been mistaken.”

By the time Sihanouk and Hun Sen had decided to see one another and needed a Paris contact, Mrs. Galabru and her husband were trusted by both men to carry messages to each camp.

The exchange was polite and efficient. A telegram arrived on November 18, 1987 at the Galabrus' residence at 173, avenue Jean Jaures, addressed to His Royal Highness Samdech Norodom Sihanouk. It was Hun Sen's note saying he would meet Sihanouk wherever he wished. Two days later, Sihanouk sent Hun Sen a telegram to the same address saying: “In response to your telegram . . . I have the honor of letting you know you may visit me at my hotel at Fere-en-Tardenois at whatever date suits you. With highest considerations, Sihanouk of Cambodia.”

After another exchange, with the Galabrus dutifully dispatching the telegrams to the proper addressee, a date was made. “I have the honor of
inviting you to a working breakfast at ten o'clock, Wednesday, 2 December 1987, at my hotel, the Hostellerie du Chateau Fere-en-Tardenois. . . . Thank you for agreeing to tape our conservations to be made public in their entirety. Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.”

By the time the two men met over breakfast the hotel was overrun by journalists and diplomats. Camera crews jostled in the elegant reception area. A microphone boom stabbed the crystal chandelier. A wedding reception booked a year in advance forced the postponement of one session between the two men. But none of this bothered Hun Sen on his first trip to Europe and his first encounter with Sihanouk. His smile was as broad as the bridegroom's.

The first day the two men met for nearly seven hours and arrived at an outline for peace: A political solution is required; all Cambodian parties should be part of the negotiations; and once the Cambodians reached an accord it would be ratified at an international conference with guarantees for Cambodia's independence. The two leaders promised to meet again in January at the same hotel and a third time in North Korea.

The second day they met for three hours, discussing refugees, restoration of the temples at Angkor, and human rights issues. On the third day they signed their agreement and made expansive remarks. After proclaiming, “The door to peace is open,” Sihanouk took up the theme that, left to their own devices, Cambodians could make peace with each other. He asked China, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam to stop fighting one another “on Cambodia's back.” Then he promised to return to Phnom Penh to preside over a four-party government in a “new Cambodian state with a parliament ‘à la française' and 100 percent independent.”

Through an interpreter, Hun Sen sounded more circumspect and he looked nervous. The first day he acknowledged that he treated Sihanouk as an “elder and a father” and described their encounter as “a friendly visit between compatriots who can lead us toward a true solution.”

“We have worked and obtained results,” Hun Sen said at the end. The photographs speak more eloquently than his conclusions. Silver-haired, fair-skinned Prince Sihanouk in his elegant suit holds the far darker-skinned hands of Hun Sen, with his pomaded hair and shiny suit. Sihanouk wears the well-rehearsed royal smile, Hun Sen a boyish grin.

All of this took place against the perfect backdrop of a four-star hotel built next to the ruins of the original Renaissance château. Telegrams were read from important officials, including U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, expressing hopes for the talks. Claude Martin was everywhere, overseeing
all the details, from setting up the taping system Sihanouk required, to paying all the bills for Sihanouk and Hun Sen. “Of course, France paid all of the expenses.”

The international press declared victory. Even Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Sihanouk's son who openly resented Hun Sen, admitted that “an agreement of sorts” had been reached “between the Phnom Penh army and the resistance armies” to adhere to an informal cease-fire.

It was too good to be true.

Predictably, within days, Sihanouk had second thoughts. He canceled both future sessions, then rescheduled a second encounter for January 20 at St. Germaine-de-Laye, just outside Paris. This time Sihanouk stayed at the luxurious Pavilion Henri IV Hotel where the meeting took place while demanding that Hun Sen find rooms elsewhere. Sihanouk was beginning to resent Hun Sen's success. After two days of meetings Hun Sen was the optimist. “We have taken a big step forward,” he said, “and made big advances.”