Latest Excuse Offered by Kissinger and Ford – Lon Not Can’t Find Address to Surrender to

Intercontinental Press – March 24, 1975
By Peter Green (John Percy)

After five years of war against the people of Cambodia, the Pentagon and its puppets in Pnompenh seem to be reaching the end of the road. But what will happen when Pnompenh falls? Who are the insurgents?

The White House says it doesn’t know. It bombed and shelled and napalmed them for five years. Now Ford and Kissinger claim they don’t know who to negotiate with. “It is not clear to me that if Lon Nol decided to surrender, he would know where to send the surrender offer,” said one State Department official quoted by the March 1 New York Times.

But this is just a ruse to justify continuing aggression and to cover up the imminent “loss” of Cambodia. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was ousted by CIA-backed Lon Nol and who is in exile in Peking, has indicated repeatedly his willingness to “negotiate.” The ministers of his Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia (RGNUC) have all been listed publicly.

It is true, however, that the real leaders of the insurgency, those inside Cambodia, are not so easily identified. One diplomat in Pnompenh described them as “the world’s most mysterious successful revolutionary movement.”

Sihanouk has been head of state and president of the National United Front of Cambodia (NUFC) since the government and front were formed almost immediately after the March 1970 coup that put Lon Nol in power. But with the growth of the insurgents inside Cambodia, Sihanouk’s influence has waned.

The best-known figure among the insurgents is Khieu Samphan, a former deputy in the National Assembly and at one time a minister in Sihanouk’s government, who fled Pnompenh in 1967 to join the resistance after the peasant uprising in Battambang Province that year. He is vice-prime minister and minister of national defense of the RGNUC, a member of the politburo of the Communist party, and the commander in chief of the People’s National Liberation Armed Forces of Cambodia. Two other deputies who left with him in 1967 are also ministers in the RGNUC – Hu Nim, minister of information and propaganda, and Hou Youn, minister of the interior, communal reforms, and cooperatives.

The shift in power from the group around Sihanouk in Peking to the Khmer Rouge leaders inside Cambodia has been formalized by a change in the composition of Sihanouk’s government. Although the change actually took place at the end of 1973, it was not formally proclaimed by Sihanouk until November 15, 1974, and was not made public until January 15, 1975.

Some of the changes involved viceministers displacing ministers. Most of the nine outgoing ministers were Sihanouk supporters, while the eight new ministers were, in general, veterans of the resistance.

Seven of the outgoing ministers were members of the twelve-member NUFC politburo. The five remaining politburo members who are in the government are Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim, and Hou Youn, along with Penn Nouth as prime minister and Sarin Chhak as foreign minister. These two are said to have little real power, and are all that are left of Sihanouk’s old cabinet in Peking.

But it is believed that the reorganized RGNUC government composed almost entirely of insurgent leaders inside Cambodia does not include some of the central leaders. Three men who are thought to have helped found the Khmer Communist party in 1951 while students in Paris – Saloth Sar, Son Sen, and Ieng Sary – have been mentioned as possibly the main leaders of the Khmer Rouge. All three are former professors who went underground and joined the resistance in 1963.

Saloth Sar is secretary-general of the Communist party and chief of the military conduct of the army and is considered by some to be the main military strategist. Son Sen is chief of the joint chiefs of staff. Ieng Sary, a member of the Communist party politburo, joined Sihanouk in Peking in 1971 and is apparently assigned to keep an eye on him.

Although any political statements by the insurgents always stress the “unity” of the broad front that is fighting Lon Nol, Sihanouk himself has often spoken of his conflict with the Khmer Rouge. In late 1971 he said in an interview that “it is possible that I will stay on for some time as Chief of State to receive the credentials of new ambassadors and to represent my country abroad. But I will not intervene in national politics – it has already cost me too much.”

There has been no visible conflict over the political line to be followed by the diverse bloc that constitutes the NUFC, however. The second National Congress of Cambodia, held February 24-25 inside the liberated area, issued a communique reaffirming its position:

“Internally, the N.U.F.C. and the R.G.N.U.C., in the name of the nation and people of Cambodia, controls the destiny of the country and upholds the great unity of the entire nation and people irrespective of social classes, political tendencies, religious belief and regardless of their past, except the seven traitors Lon Nol, Sirik Matak, Son Ngoc Thanh, Cheng Heng, In Tam, Long Boret, Sosthene Fernandez. The N.U.F.C. and R.G.N.U.C. will build a prosperous Cambodia in which the people will have enough to eat and wear, have their own homes and enjoy medical and educational facilities.

“Externally, the N.U.F.C. and R.G.N.U.C., following the policy of neutrality and non-alignment, cannot tolerate any military base of aggression on their soil and firmly adhere to the five principles of peaceful coexistence....”

This purely nationalist program goes even further than the Maoists’ “bloc of four classes” in its efforts to limit the revolutionary struggle to the “democratic stage.” In an article published in the November 1974 Le Monde Diplomatique, Khieu Samphan spelled it out in full: not only would the workers and peasants be uniting with their former king and the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, but also with “some feudal elements, some landlords, some comprador capitalists....”

But the pressure of U.S. imperialism may force the Communist leadership of the insurgents to go beyond the narrow limits of their program, even against their will. Already in June 1974 they were forced to nationalize the mainly French-owned rubber plantations. According to the RGNUC statement announcing the nationalizations, this was done only after fighting “all kinds of obstacles to defend and preserve” them.

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1975/IP1311.pdf#page=7&view=FitV,3