P arts of the original text in Stephen Heder's "The debate to etch history in
stone" (Phnom Penh Post, June 16 - 29 pg 19) were missing from the published
version. The corrected paragraphs read:
A deal contrary to US and Chinese
wishes might also have offered the PDK chances to extend its power and
influence. There could have been no guarantee that ASEAN, Japan and Australia,
acting against the wishes of the US, China and other Permanent Five actors,
could have crafted a deal, maneuvered the relevant Cambodian players into
accepting it, and then successfully ensured such a stable and effective outcome
that the PDK would have been politically and militarily checkmated.
Both
assertions were egregiously and dangerously wrong at the time they were made,
and subsequent events have demonstrated that the argument-saving device of
depicting Funcinpec as a Khmer Rouge Trojan horse had no basis in
reality.
This ambition led Pol Pot into the Paris Agreements and to be
prepared to take the risk of at least partial and temporary military
demobilization if the political conditions were perceived as sufficiently
favorable to the PDK. The course of events after October 1991 convinced him and
most other PDK leaders that political conditions were unfavorable, and thus to
refrain from demobilization and progressively resume military action against
SoC.
The logic of the Paris Agreements and their implementation was to
put the PDK in the position either of accepting an imperfect but reasonable
chance of rejoining the Cambodian political mainstream through peaceful
participation in the political process...
Instead, this danger has
receded, although genocidal acts and other egregious human rights abuses by the
PDK continue. As for the human rights picture in Cambodia more generally,
Kiernan's studied avoidance of SoC's human rights record means he is unable to
deal with the implications of the real results of the implementation of the
Agreements for human rights in most of Cambodia.
