Thai lecturer: Viet immigrants live along the border with Thailand and they are in command in the clash with the Siamese (sic?)

Many Cambodian people of Vietnamese descent live on the border in Trat.

Cambodian troops use guerrilla warfare, ambushing our troops.

They fire handguns, then hit us with heavy artillery attacks.

That's more the Vietnamese style of fighting. I believe the soldiers who are really in command are those troops who are descended from the Vietnamese.

Boonrueng: Battling vested interests

Thailand is fighting not just a war - lecturer

2/05/2011
Bangkok Post

The Thai-Cambodian border skirmishes will be protracted, predicts Rajabhat University academic Boonrueng Katchama in Surin, the scene of the latest clashes.

Mr Boonrueng tells KING-OUA LAOHONG that the border conflict is unlikely to end any time soon because it is not a mere two-country affair.

Do you think any talks between 2nd Army commander Lt Gen Thawatchai Samutsakorn and Cambodia's Lt Gen Chea Mon, chief of the Cambodian 4th Region Army are likely to result in a ceasefire agreement?

A truce in the next couple of months will be hard to achieve. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen wants any talks to resolve the border conflict to be mediated by a third country.

He wants to include territorial disputes over the Ta Kwai and Ta Muen Thom temples in the wider process to settle the conflict.