By Stephen Kurczy
Asia Times Online contributor
kurczy@gmail.com.
PHNOM PENH - The military standoff between Thailand and Cambodia over the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple complex has emerged as a new regional security hotspot, one that has claimed at least nine lives, stifled bilateral commercial relations and consumed precious financial resources.
The row is expected to feature at next week's Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Phuket, Thailand, where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be among those in attendance. With both governments playing the nationalism card to domestic constituencies, security analysts say there is no end in sight to the conflict, which in recent weeks has returned to the boil.
Tensions mounted last month when Thailand challenged the United Nations decision in 2008 to designate the temple as a world heritage site under the sole jurisdiction of Cambodia, motivating both sides to bolster their troop levels in the contested border area. Cambodia, meanwhile, has rejected Thailand's claim to 1.8 square miles (4.6 square kilometers) around the temple, which is more readily accessible from Thailand. The two countries share an 800-kilometer border.
Last week, Phnom Penh used the one-year anniversary of the temple's world heritage site registration as an occasion to stir anti-Thai sentiment. Celebrating what they referred to as a "victory" over Thailand, Cambodian authorities released pigeons from the cliff-top temple and monks at 4,000 pagodas nationwide simultaneously and symbolically banged drums.
In the capital, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, Hun Sen's right-hand-man, accused Thailand of "trying to invade and take Cambodian land". Major General Srey Dek, the top commander at the temple, told the crowd: "On behalf of the soldiers, I want to send a strong commitment to fight any obstacle in order to protect my nation."
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