00:00As renewed clashes along the Thai-Cambodia border nears its third week,
00:05questions remain on how both sides can break the deadlock.
00:08Dr. Det Sokudom, Senior Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace
00:13and Professor of International Relations at Paragon International University,
00:18shares how Cambodians view the fighting and what's needed for a lasting ceasefire.
00:23Everyone is very frustrated and has, you know,
00:27shows a great extent of anger towards the disproportionate level of aggression by the Thai military
00:35that has conducted deep military strikes into Cambodian territory.
00:39And I think Cambodians fully understand that this is mainly driven by the ongoing fragmentation of Thai politics.
00:47But it frustrates people because whatever happened next door in their own country
00:53should not have resulted in the tragedies of the Cambodian civilians, including children.
01:00And as a country that has just gone through reconstruction and rebirth of the nation in the past two, three decades,
01:08majority of Cambodians, in fact, all Cambodians would welcome peace
01:13and especially generally encourage the Thai population to also, you know,
01:21put pressure on their government and to return, force them to return to the ceasefire agreement
01:29and not, you know, dictate Cambodia to accept the terms that are, that are spelled out for Cambodia.
01:38This breeds less as a ceasefire agreement than a dictation requiring Cambodia to surrender.
01:45And that is not well received.
01:48The prevailing view is that this is not something that could be trustworthy
01:52because if Thailand could break the ceasefire that was signed under President Trump,
01:58then there's no reason to believe that the country would be able to hold a ceasefire unilaterally this way.
02:06Cambodia, according to Dett, is always receptive to ceasefire proposals.
02:11He stressed that lasting peace requires enforcement mechanisms
02:14and, more importantly, political will from both sides.
02:18I would say that, you know, judging from the pattern,
02:23when any time a ceasefire is proposed from the Cambodian side,
02:28the reception has always been positive.
02:30As in, you know, case in point was when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim proposed on December 6th
02:37that there would be a ceasefire on that day at 10 p.m.
02:41And it would be supported by the AOT team on the ground
02:45and the satellite image and whatnot provided by the Americans.
02:51That was also positively received widely in Cambodia.
02:56But then later in the day, we learned that the Thai side simply refused to accept that.
03:02And also we have to address the root cause of it, right?
03:06So for the current conflict, as I have argued earlier,
03:10is driven mainly by what is going on in Thai domestic politics.
03:14And until that is resolved, I am somewhat skeptical that any pressure from outside at this point would be effective.
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