Sympathy, But Little Support For Exile

He was run out of Cambodia at gunpoint a month ago. He’s been circling the globe pleading for help, but he has little to show for his efforts.

Now he’s stuck behind the high walls of a big white house in Bangkok, barred from traveling even to the Cambodian border by the Thai government, which doesn’t want him to stir up trouble. His own father is meeting today with his archrival.

Reality is closing in on Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the exiled first prime minister of Cambodia.

Everyone around Prince Ranariddh - his neighbors in Southeast Asia, big powers like the United States and Japan, certainly his father, King Sihanouk - were appalled by the coup d’etat staged by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen on July 5-6.

But for the sake of stability in the region, no one, not even the king, has taken a strong stand on Prince Ranariddh’s behalf to reverse Hun Sen’s power play.

King Sihanouk has denounced the coup as a “comedy” and attacked the newly installed co-premier, Ung Huot, as a Hun Sen “puppet.” In a fax circulated Monday to news agencies, the king said he was so frustrated by the situation that he was ready to abdicate.

But during all this, the king has offered only tepid public support for his second son. Though he issued a handwritten statement over the weekend saying Ranariddh has a rightful claim to his old position, he also agreed to give an audience to Hun Sen today in Beijing, where the king has been receiving medical care since February.

In an interview Monday with a small group of foreign reporters, Prince Ranariddh, 53, spent more than a hour trying hard to present himself as a man still in charge, with the moral mandate to resume his role as prime minister of Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world and the victim of two decades of fighting and political chaos.

But he is clearly no strongman.

Smartly dressed in crisp blue shirt and silk tie without a suit coat, Ranariddh sat ramrod-straight on the edge of sofa, his voice rising as he implored the world to see the injustice.

“I’m not fighting to go back to Cambodia. I’m fighting to restore democracy in Cambodia, and I’m not alone. I’m not alone,” repeated Ranariddh, a French-educated former professor.

He gestured toward his entourage, a huddle of cabinet officers, members of parliament, sympathetic Cambodian journalists and law students who escaped with him.

“Even if tomorrow I decide not to continue fighting anymore, if I decide to go back to France, the resistance will continue,” he insisted.