By GRANT PECK, Associated Press
BANGKOK (AP) — The United States, which played a major role in ending border clashes last year between Thailand and Cambodia, will be providing $45 million in aid packages to the two Southeast Asian countries to help ensure regional stability and prosperity, a senior U.S. State Department official said Friday.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael DeSombre made the announcement in an online media briefing in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, where he was meeting with senior Thai officials to discuss the implementation of last October’s ceasefire, also known as the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord.
Longstanding competing claims to territory along the Thai-Cambodian border was the root cause of the fighting.
“The restoration of peace at the Thai-Cambodian border opens new opportunities for the United States to deepen our work with both countries to promote regional stability and advance our interests in a safer, stronger and more prosperous Indo-Pacific,” DeSombre said.
On Saturday, he’s scheduled to hold discussions with top officials from Cambodia in the country’s capital, Phnom Penh.
The United States “will be providing $15 million for border stabilization to help communities recover and to support displaced persons; $10 million in demining and unexploded ordinance clearance operations; and $20 million for initiatives that will help both countries combat scam operations and drug trafficking, among many other programs,” DeSombre said.
Details of the aid packages were still under discussion, he said.
China said it has provided about $2.8 million in emergency humanitarian aid to help Cambodians displaced by the fighting. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said Beijing made the same offer of assistance to Thailand, and that it was under consideration by his government.
The United States and China have competed for influence in Southeast Asia for at least a decade. Cambodia is a close ally of Beijing, and while Thailand has long and close ties with Washington, they are widely seen as loosening in recent years.
The fighting in July and December displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Thailand and Cambodia and killed about 100 soldiers and civilians. Land mines left over from decades of civil war in Cambodia are a continuing problem, while Thailand claims newly laid mines in frontier areas were responsible for wounding its patrolling soldiers in about a dozen incidents last year.
Online scams originating in Southeast Asia, especially from Cambodia and Myanmar, are major transnational crime problems that have swindled billions of dollars from victims around the would.
U.S. assistance to the countries of Southeast Asia and other parts of the world for humanitarian and development programs was severely cut last year when the Trump administration shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
Cambodia and Thailand initially clashed for five days in late July before agreeing on a preliminary ceasefire. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim at the time pressed for an unconditional ceasefire, but there was little headway until U.S. President Donald Trump intervened. Trump said that he warned the Thai and Cambodian leaders that Washington wouldn’t move forward with trade agreements if hostilities continued.
The ceasefire was formalized in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended.
New fighting broke out early last month, but the Thai and Cambodian defense ministers signed a new pact on Dec. 27, vowing to implement the October agreement.
“We are very focused on pursuing peace in and around the world,” DeSombre told journalists. “President Trump is a president of peace, and really believes that peace is critical to economic growth and prosperity.”
