By Persuasion

The U.S. joins a plan to get Viet Nam out of Cambodia

"It is not our intention to bring Viet Nam to its knees. We only want to bring it to its senses." So declared Singapore's Foreign Minister Suppiah Dhanabalan last week as 93 governments met in a special U.N. session to discuss a complex and contentious problem: how to persuade--or pressure--Viet Nam to pull its 200,000 troops out of Cambodia.

Right from the start, the conference faced one major handicap: the absence of the three principals. Boycotting the session were Viet Nam, which has occupied Cambodia for the past 30 months, and the Soviet Union, which had bankrolled the Vietnamese invasion. Cambodia, whose government was installed by Viet Nam, was not invited.

Still, the U.S. and the five-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)* hoped that the conference would provide what Washington termed a "framework for settlement" and offer some inducements for Hanoi to retreat from its costly adventure. ASEAN introduced a plan designed to dispel Hanoi's fear that its enemy, China, might attempt to seize Cambodia if Viet Nam withdrew from the country. The proposal called for disarming all forces contending for power in Cambodia, including 30,000 to 40,000 Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge guerrillas. A neutral, interim government under U.N. supervision would then be established to organize free elections.

In Phnom-Penh, a Cambodian official scoffed at the idea of an effective U.N. peace-keeping force. In Moscow, TASS characterized the conference as a "provocative farce." Peking was outraged at the prospect of disarming the Khmer Rouge. At the U.N., the plan was opposed by Han Nianlong, China's acting Foreign Minister, who warned about Vietnamese "duplicity." At week's end a vague compromise plan was adopted that called for "appropriate arrangements" to ensure that armed Cambodian factions would not be able to prevent or disrupt elections--if any should ever occur.

At issue was not only the fate of the long-suffering Cambodians but also the competing strategic interests of China and the Soviet Union. The Soviets have been subsidizing Hanoi at a cost of $3 million to $6 million a day since 1979, after the Vietnamese ousted the Peking-supported Pol Pot government from Cambodia. In turn, the Chinese have armed the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who have been harrying Hanoi's occupying army. Ultimately, Peking seeks to restore the Pol Pot regime to power in Phnom-Penh in spite of the fact that his Communist regime slaughtered an estimated 3 million Cambodians during a reign of terror that lasted nearly four years. One theory to explain why China did not back the ASEAN proposal was that it wants to keep on bleeding Viet Nam and the Soviet Union for a while longer.

Speaking at the U.N., U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig indirectly suggested that economic aid might be forthcoming for Viet Nam if it would pull out its troops. He warned that the U.S. would "continue to question seriously any economic assistance to Viet Nam, from whatever source, as long as Viet Nam continues to squander its scarce resources on aggression." Washington has already succeeded in temporarily blocking $118 million in aid for Viet Nam from the U.N.

At the same time, the U.S. has joined China and ASEAN in promoting a united front of the various forces in Cambodia fighting the Vietnamese. Since the main component would be Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, the Reagan Administration is in the anomalous position of backing, however obliquely, Communist combat forces. Says a senior State Department official: "We would be willing to provide political and psychological assistance, but we are not committed to military aid."

To complicate matters even further, U.S. policy in Cambodia is rooted in a strategy that extends far beyond Southeast Asia. At the U.N. last week, Haig put the matter bluntly. He told Moscow that as the "financier" of Viet Nam's occupation of Cambodia, the Soviet Union has a "special obligation" to resolve the issue. In the future, improved relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S. may be influenced by Moscow's behavior at conferences on Cambodia as well as in talks about getting out of Afghanistan.

* Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

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