Bangkok, December 12 (EFE). – Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said he will speak by telephone with United States President Donald Trump this Friday to discuss the new wave of border conflicts between his country and Cambodia, after the American offered to mediate amid the conflict’s escalation.
“The conversation is expected to take place around 9:20 p.m. Thai time (9:20 a.m. Washington time),” Anutin told reporters at Government House in Bangkok.
The Thai leader believes the call will be an “update” on the situation at the border between Thailand and Cambodia, where both countries have been carrying out attacks since Sunday that have killed at least 24 people. This is the worst episode of violence since July, when five days of hostilities claimed about fifty lives.
“Any decisions or actions are the responsibility of the Thai government, which has given the Thai Armed Forces its support and mandate to carry out the operations,” Anutin clarified.
Shortly before Anutin’s confirmation, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry reported that it was “coordinating the timing” of the contact.
Trump expected to call the leaders of Thailand and Cambodia on Tuesday during a political event in the state of Pennsylvania, USA, about the military escalation at different points of their shared border, some 820 kilometers away.
“If he (Trump) called me in my capacity as head of government, I would explain and clarify how the situation developed into what we are seeing now. He would have to listen to the information directly from me in detail,” Anutin said the day before.
The new wave of attacks violates the two attempts to seal peace that followed the July clashes: the ceasefire reached in Malaysia that same month, brokered by the US and with China as an observer in the talks; and the peace agreement signed in the same country in October and promoted by Trump himself.
The Republican boasts of having brought an end – albeit temporarily – to the violence unleashed in July, and from Pennsylvania he reiterated that pacifying the conflict between Bangkok and Phnom Penh is part of the list of eight wars that he says have ended since his return to power in January this year.
The two Asian countries are engaged in a historic dispute over the sovereignty of several areas along their shared border, which stretches about 820 kilometers (520 miles) and was mapped by France in 1907 when Cambodia was part of French Indochina. EFE
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