Monday, Sep. 14, 1959

A Present for the King

In their royal palace at Pnompenh one evening last week, Cambodia's King Norodom Suramarit and Queen Kossamak paused for a moment before leaving their private apartment behind the throne room. The acting protocol chief of the royal household, Prince Norodom Vakrivan, had just brought in a package newly arrived from Hong Kong. The accompanying card said that it contained a "gift for the King and queen" from a U.S. engineering company that had helped build the 134-mile Cambodian-American Friendship Highway running from Pnompenh to the seaport of Sihanoukville.

Opening the parcel, the prince found a lacquer box. Inside it was another box tightly encircled by adhesive tape. The plump, balding King, 63, and his handsome queen, 55, decided they could not wait for the unsealing, and left to meet with Cambodia's delegation to the United Nations. They had scarcely reached the reception hall when the palace trembled as a bomb blasted the room they had just been in. Prince Vakrivan was blown apart; a palace servant was killed and four others seriously wounded.

While the King and queen besought their faithful subjects to remain calm, Cambodian security police began an investigation, soon announced that the card from the U.S. firm was fraudulent and a "crude attempt" to stir up anti-American sentiment. Who was guilty of the outrage? Observers pointed out that neutralist Cambodia's relations with its pro-Western neighbors, South Viet Nam and Thailand, were on the mend after several years of tension (TIME, March 16). Only one group stood to gain from chaos in Cambodia: the Communists.

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