I will always remember Stephen Solarz with great warmth despite his unfortunate "miracle on the Mekong" comment re a recent election (2003?). I need to think hard how I first met him... it was while I was living in Washington, D. C. post-law school writing my memoir, I think , in 1999. He invited me for coffee on one occasion and then to share in a Thanksgiving meal with his family at his McLean home; he asked then Singapore ambassador Madam Chan Heng Chee to give me a ride as she was the only other guest; I had met her earlier at a sit-down reception hosted by Cambodian ambassador Eng Roland. I remember asking her pointedly why Singapore played such a prominent role in the Paris Peace Agreements. To paraphrase her: Singapore being such a small country land-wise, we were adamantly against invasion; it was national interest. During the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, she was part of the Singapore team at the UN in New York.
- Theary C. Seng, 23 October 2016
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Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Paris Peace Agreements, 23 Oct. 1991. I was in my first semester of my first year at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service and followed the news on Cambodia in The Washington Post -- with tears almost everyday of the coverage because it was my first encounter with updated real-time news of Cambodia. From the time I escaped Cambodia in autumn of 1979 till Oct. 1991, I received literally no news about Cambodia.
A page from CAMBODIA: A SHATTERED SOCIETY by Alexandrine Martin |
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