NEWS
By Sonni Efron and Sonni Efron,LOS ANGELES TIMES | July 13, 1997
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- If Cambodia is to have a new strongman, Hun Sen has the right resume, according to his friends and enemies.The second prime minister, who controls Phnom Penh after a coup d'etat last weekend, is described as a masterful politician with a record of astutely manipulating Cambodia's vertiginous political scene to his advantage.While Hun Sen's admirers say he has always been careful to operate within the bounds of the law, long before the takeover critics charged that he intimidated opponents and sponsored violence to further his political agenda.
NEWS
By Ian Johnson and Ian Johnson,Sun Staff Correspondent | August 28, 1995
BATTAMBANG, Cambodia -- You see the signs of trouble within the first few miles on Highway 5, the road leading from Phnom Penh west to Battambang.In early morning it is already choked with traffic, because guerrillas have once again blown up the railroad. Moreover, the road is less pavement than gravel and potholes, overseen by government soldiers who set up illegal roadblocks and demand bribes for passage.The 175-mile trip takes seven hours, and it leads to the front line of Cambodia's civil war, a conflict seeming without end, fought between the government and the Khmer Rouge.
NEWS
By Los Angeles Times | August 5, 1995
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Michael Hayes, editor of the Phnom Penh Post, dubbed Secretary of State Warren Christopher's one-day visit here yesterday "Sideshow Two: The Rerun."He was alluding to the William Shawcross book "Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia," which told how, during the Vietnam War, the United States drew Cambodia out of its neutrality and into a tragic sequence of civil wars, death and destruction."You are entering a new era here, with new opportunities for greatness and democracy," Mr. Christopher told King Norodom Sihanouk last night in a meeting at the palace.
NEWS
By New York Times News Service | June 4, 1993
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's former monarch, announced yesterday that he had formed a coalition government in which he would serve as prime minister and supreme military commander, only to abandon the plan this morning in the midst of what appears to be a long-running family psychodrama pitting the prince against one of his sons.The son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, had originally been named deputy prime minister in the newly proclaimed National Government of Cambodia.
NEWS
By New York Times News Service | May 30, 1993
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The first returns from Cambodia's first multiparty election in more than two decades showed an early lead yesterday for the opposition party associated with Prince Norodom Sihanouk.Although the United Nations released partial vote counts from only four of Cambodia's 21 provinces and warned against early predictions of the final outcome, the returns were consistent in each province. They showed the royalist opposition party in first place by a sizable margin, followed by the governing Cambodian People's Party, with the 18 other parties far behind.
NEWS
By SUSAN A. JANOSKI | May 30, 1993
Phnom Penh, Cambodia. -- Imagine a three-story yellow stucco schoolhouse with tiled floors and whirring ceiling fans pushing 90 degree heat out the open windows, beyond the balustrade to the paddy fields that subsume the outskirts of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.This school is an historic place. It has outlasted several generations of violence. It may outlast several more. It was to this school that I was brought, from Baltimore, to train a cross-section of Cambodian society as interpreters for the first Cambodian elections in 38 years.