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Amid Thailand-Cambodia clashes, US hopes for 'truce' next week
Foreign ministers from the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN are scheduled to meet on Monday in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the crisis.
US State Secretary Marco Rubio said that Washington hopes a renewed ceasefire can be reached early next week to halt the ongoing clashes between Thai and Cambodian forces.
“We are working hard to push everybody back to compliance. And we are cautiously optimistic that we can get there by Monday or Tuesday of next week,” Rubio told journalists on Friday, AFP reported.
Foreign ministers from the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN are scheduled to meet on Monday in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the crisis.
Rubio said he spoke by phone on Thursday with Thailand’s foreign minister and that Washington will continue diplomatic engagements over the weekend.
"Both sides have made commitments in writing that they signed," Rubio said.
"Those commitments today are not being kept as a result of both sides claiming grievances against one another, and so the work now is to bring them back to the table."
US President Donald Trump earlier this year claimed credit for an earlier ceasefire, saying he had pressured both Thailand and Cambodia and listing the standoff among the conflicts he said he had helped resolve.
Rubio defended the administration's record, saying that its diplomacy "actually did stop fighting" although it has since resumed.
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Thailand's war on ‘cross-border scammers': Army
Thailand’s army has recast its deadly confrontation with Cambodia as part of a broader campaign against cross-border scam networks, adding a new justification for bombing runs that it says are aimed at dismantling cybercrime hubs, Bloomberg reported.
Describing the operations as a “war against the scam army,” a Thai military division involved in the border fighting said this week it is on the frontline of a global battle against transnational crime syndicates operating across neighbouring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Impact of the war on both sides
The humanitarian impact of the fighting has intensified.
Cambodia’s interior ministry said on Sunday that more than half a million people have been displaced by two weeks of deadly border clashes with neighbouring Thailand.
“At present, more than half a million Cambodian people, including women and children, are suffering severe hardship due to forced displacement from their homes and schools to escape artillery shells, rockets, and aerial bombardments carried out by Thailand's F-16 aircraft,” the ministry said, adding that 518,611 people have been evacuated.
Thailand has also reported large-scale displacement, with authorities saying around 400,000 people have been forced to leave their homes due to the renewed conflict.
The latest round of fighting, involving tanks, drones and artillery, has killed at least 22 people in Thailand and 19 in Cambodia, according to official figures.
The dispute centres on an 800-kilometre border demarcated during the colonial era, as well as several ancient temple ruins located along the frontier.
Both sides have accused each other of triggering the latest violence and of carrying out attacks on civilians, following five days of clashes in July that left dozens dead.
