BANGKOK: Thailand’s leader vowed on Saturday to keep fighting on the disputed border with Cambodia as fighter jets struck targets hours after US President Donald Trump said he had brokered a new ceasefire.
Caretaker Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the Southeast Asian nation would “continue to perform military actions until we feel no more harm and threats to our land and people”.
Trump, who brokered a ceasefire in the long-running border dispute in October, spoke to Anutin and Cambodian premier Hun Manet on Friday and said they had agreed to “cease all shooting”.
Neither mentioned any agreement in statements after their calls with Trump, and Anutin said there was no ceasefire.
“I want to make it clear. Our actions this morning already spoke,” Anutin posted on Facebook. The White House did not comment on the continued fighting. Hun Manet, in a statement on Saturday, said he welcomed a proposal by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who has been a mediator in peace talks, to cease hostilities from Saturday evening.
Anwar, chair of the 10-nation ASEAN grouping, in a Facebook post, urged both sides to “refrain from any further military actions including the use of force or forward movement of armed units”.
He said an ASEAN observer team, led by the Malaysian chief of defence forces, would be deployed to the border and the US government would provide satellite monitoring capabilities. However, Anutin said “there has been no agreement on halting anything”, when asked by reporters about the Malaysian proposal.
Thailand’s foreign minister told a press conference the country would cooperate with the observer team, but any ceasefire would need to be preceded by talks. “We can’t just announce a ceasefire while the fighting is going on,” he said.
Cambodia and Thailand have been exchanging heavy-weapons fire at multiple points along the 817-kilometre border since Monday, in some of the heaviest fighting since a five-day clash in July.
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