UNSC to discuss Thai-Cambodia dispute

The UN Security Council is expected to discuss a tense military standoff between Cambodia and Thailand this week as more troops amassed along the border, officials said yesterday.
Thailand's ambassador to the UN, Don Pramudwinai, said the Security Council on Thursday would discuss the border dispute that has troops from both countries facing off near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple.
"I have been informed that the UN has included Preah Vihear on the emergency agenda to be discussed at the Security Council meeting tomorrow," he told reporters in Bangkok.
More than 500 Thai troops and at least 1,000 Cambodian soldiers are squaring off over the small patch of land near the temple ruins, but Cambodian officials said yesterday thousands more Thai troops were positioned along the border.
Cambodian cabinet spokesman Phay Siphan estimated about 4,000 Thai troops in total have gathered along the frontier in several areas -- not just near Preah Vihear.
"They just want to show off their muscle, but we don't care about that. We stick to a peaceful way to solve the problem," Phay Siphan told AFP.
Cambodia has sent heavy weapons to reinforce troops on its northern border in Anlong Veng, where there is also disputed territory, said a military official on condition of anonymity.
"There are more (Thai) troops now at Anlong Veng than there are here (at Preah Vihear). There are tanks and artillery," said the Cambodian colonel with close ties to Thai armed forces.
But Thailand denied it was reinforcing the frontier.
"Thailand has not been building up forces along the border," deputy army spokeswoman Colonel Sirichan Ngathong told AFP.
"We maintain the same amount of soldiers, and more than 400 soldiers were sent to the overlapping area."
Cambodia called for the UN to help broker a solution to the standoff after the countries failed to any headway in two days of talks over the disputed land near Preah Vihear, which legally belongs to Cambodia.
Thailand's chief negotiator to the crisis called Wednesday for leaders of the two nations to meet, saying an existing border committee would not be able to solve the problem.
"At this stage I think it's rather the leaders who must hold a summit as they are the decision makers," armed forces head General Boonsrang Niumpradit told reporters, adding that Thai troops had been ordered to remain peaceful.
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Wednesday accused his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen of capitalising on nationalist sentiment ahead of Sunday's general election in Cambodia, saying talks would be "less intense" after the polls.
A spat in 2003 over Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple -- the most significant symbol of the country's ancient Khmer empire -- sparked a night of riots in which Thailand's embassy and several Thai-owned businesses were burned and looted.