… Today is indeed a great pleasure for me to have returned to the city of Pailin once again after my previous trip on October 22, 1996 for an integration of different forces and starting peace throughout Cambodia. I am most happy to be joined by monks and people whose faces are embedded with smiles and joys at the inauguration of achievements that we have collaboratively built in our country as a whole, and the city of Pailin in particular. In my name as a citizen of Cambodia, without presenting myself as the Cambodian leader, I wish to raise my two hands expressing gratitude to our people throughout the country, especially our people in the area of Pailin and others for their acceptance of the win-win policy that I personally have studied, set out and directed its implementation till we have come to final success.
… Once I flew into the airspace of Pursat I have tuned in FM Radios 90.5 MHz of the city of Pailin and 91 MHz of Battambang province I heard a good piece of poem and it is about the meaning of the win-win policy. It recalled me of that time when I was living in a small wooden house in Takhmao in midst of noise made by frogs and other amphibians, as a leader of Cambodia I pondered, I have a house to live in and some of our people were living in war. I was born in 1952 when war with France was in its final stage and I went into war again from 1970 to 1975. I was wounded five times in fighting. I know only too well what war and separation mean. Though I was not dead in war but I slept into a coma and suffered tremendous pains for an operation in addition to being separated from wife and children. I pondered on this issue and thought myself in a position not of a leader but a soldier or a person living in the war area, how I could react to the situation. This has brought me three conditional choices which lie in the core of the win-win policy.
… First, it has to provide and guarantee safety and security to physical body and life of our (integrated) people. Second, it has to guarantee employment and positions for our integrated people, and it means that those who were soldiers or police before the integration would remain in their positions and professions. Third, it entirely offers guarantee and recognition over personal properties and belongings – land, houses, etc. The three core elements have made the win-win policy an effectively implemented concept. It could not be successfully implemented if we had no participation from our people, armed forces and that is why I wish to express from the bottom my heart my sincere thanks and appreciation to those involved in implementing the win-win policy realizing achievement of peace and putting an end war. Cambodia before was divided with so many internal borders, and to pass from one zone to another one would require going through fighting, if not between humans it would be with mines. I am grateful to the Radio Stations that I mentioned above for the poems and also the replay of a song that I have written about a Khmer palm tree in the city of gemstones, and I think there are various songs in memories of my visit and our integration day.
… I wish to say here that I thank HE Y Chhean and Sok Pheap who had led the rebels in the separated zone (from the Khmer Rouge) and made themselves part of the Royal Government. In the moment that I was standing in front of TVs at the inauguration of TV3 the Municipality of Phnom Penh, I had a call from HE Pol Saroeun who called me from the Srah Keo district to inform me the start of the separation of Pailin and Mealai, and other areas thereafter until we have completed the whole process. I think it is time to evaluate the three core elements of the win-win policy and I think our people in the region as well as in the whole country are of consideration that it is a realistic policy. I told HE Y Chhean with Mr. Ieng Vuth and Long Sarin when they came to see me in my house in Takhmao, that Mr. Y Chhean should be appointed as the Governor of the city of Pailin and the Royal Government only sent here one advisor from the Ministry of Interior. This means that Cambodia has broken down all its internal dividers. War is easy to make but to put an end to it is difficult. Just a few parliamentarians brought Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk down on 18 March 1970 and they made war with tanks and armoured vehicles but they never had the ability to stop it and the real losers were our innocent people.
… Implementing the win-win policy is making no one a winner or a loser. After each victory in the battlefield, what to gain from fighting were all sort of rifles but in this moment the gain that we all are collecting is the Peace Bridge and other Bailey Bridges, school buildings, hospitals, canals and roads. I am grateful to the authority of Pailin city for their efforts in developing the city as I saw from helicopter bitumen roads in the city. We have put into use four bridges today and I think that gaps between different regions in the country should not be too big or it means that we integrate only administratively, which is not a real integration. That is why the Royal Government has given priority to put in place communication from one place to another. The Bailey Bridges built here are the O Tavao Bridge that is 33 metres, the O Tapung Bridge that is 24 metres, the O Chral Bridge that is 30 metres and a concrete bridge that is 72 metres with solar energized light, which we have named it the Peace Bridge.
… I wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) for its efforts in de-mining and removing UEXOs aimed at reducing level of dangers on our people and clearing land for cultivation. As we have with us here today a number of Thai guests I wish to inform them and our people that tomorrow there will be an important meeting between Cambodia and Thailand, over which the two Prime Ministers will preside. We will have a Cambodia-Thai Joint Cabinet Retreat in Siemreap of Cambodia and Ubunrachhathani of Thailand. For our people living along the border of the two countries, HE Thaksin and I are making efforts to seek all possible means to help them benefit from the cooperation between our two countries. Take for instance we have purchased electricity from Thailand to meet our electrical need in Pailin and we also have to plant all sorts of crops for supply to the Thai market because supplying them to Phnom Penh or to other markets beyond Phnom Penh would be unviable. We are considering on allowing border crossing by a lessez passer or border card and travellers between the two countries would need no visa. Border card should be a pass to travel throughout Cambodia or Thailand for the two peoples. We may think of one-week validity for the card and it can be revalidated by the immigration police.
Samdech Hun Sen offered on that occasion 20 million Riel, one computer and one printer to the Buddhist Primary School of Ratanak Saophoan, a building of three rooms for the Bor Paileav Mosque, a two-storey school building of twelve classrooms and various office equipments to the College of Tep Nimit-Hun Sen, a school building of six classrooms for the Primary School of O Tapuk, a school building of five classrooms for the Primary School of O Choeukram, a school building of five classrooms for the Primary School of Voaddhanak Saophoan, two Bailey Bridges and a rural road to the people in the commune of O Tavao, and 375 tons of rice for labour to the people of Pailin and a Hun Sen-Water Pump.
EndItem.
