Buddhists call for peace in Cambodia
August 3, 1997
Web posted at: 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT)PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (CNN) -- More than 1,000 people took to the streets of the Cambodian capital for a peace march Sunday, one month after Second Prime Minister Hun Sen ousted First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a violent takeover.
The marchers, mostly monks, nuns and laymen, were led by the country's Buddhist patriarch, Maha Ghosananda, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He led prayers asking that "peace prevail in Cambodia." Armed soldiers and police were evident but did not intervene.
"We will have peace when the leaders decide to solve their problems through negotiations and peaceful means," said one monk, Kim Teng.
"Resolve the conflicts..." comments rally organizer Thyda Khus 
224 K / 16 sec. AIFF or WAV sound The march started at a temple, wound its way through city streets and ended with prayers and meditations at Cambodia's Independence Monument.
The peace march came as Hun Sen's forces continued to push back Ranariddh's troops toward the Thai border.
Thousands of Cambodians have fled the fighting, and about 3,400 refugees are said to be sheltering in camps in the border region.
Ranariddh, who fled the country, has been waging an international campaign to pressure Hun Sen into implementing reforms.
A mediation delegation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is in Phnom Penh and has held talks with Hun Sen.
ASEAN said both sides agreed on the need for elections, but a major point of difference appeared to be the future role of Ranariddh, and whether he should be allowed to return to the country.
The ouster of Ranariddh in early July came after a period of worsening tension between Hun Sen and Ranariddh, who had agreed to share power even though they were battlefield enemies in the 1980s.
At that time, Hun Sen led a regime supported by Cambodia's historic enemy, Vietnam. The royalists of Ranariddh, the son of King Norodom Sihanouk, were allied with the Khmer Rouge to expel the Vietnamese.
In the run-up to the July takeover, Hun Sen and Ranariddh grew increasingly at odds over the future political role of former Khmer Rouge guerrillas and their leaders.
Correspondent John Raedler and Reuters contributed to this report.
- Message Board: Cambodian situation
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Related sites:
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- UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR
- ASEAN - the official website of Association of the Association of South East Asian Nations
- Cambodian Information Center - includies Cambodian news and photos, academic papers on Cambodia, and homepage links
- Embassy of Cambodia - site of the Chancery of the Royal Embassy of Cambodia to the United States located in Washington, D.C.
- Cambodia - profile from CARE
- The Cambodian Genocide Program - presents the Cambodian Genocide Data Base, an archive of bibliographic, biographic, photographic and geographic data
- 1996 Human Rights Report: Cambodia released by the U.S. Department of State on January 30, 1997
- Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors - an ad hoc group of Cambodians and non-Cambodians interested in documenting Cambodian survivor stories on the Internet.
- Beauty and Darkness: Cambodia in Modern History - documents, essays, oral histories, and photos relating to the recent history of Cambodia, with an emphasis on the Khmer Rouge period
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