Cambodia Plans to Offer Lessons on ‘Win-Win’ Policy to Burma

The Cambodia Daily | 13 March 2017

Following a meeting last week with Burmese military commander Min Aung Hlaing, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Friday that Cambodia planned to dispatch officials to pass on lessons of his “win-win” policy to help a country still struggling with regional rifts and warring factions. [And Burma should say, "Thank you.  But, NO!"]

The premier credits the policy—based on the premise of shared prosperity in peacetime—with convincing Khmer Rouge rebels to drop their arms and accept a unified government in the 1990s.

In a speech inaugurating a pagoda temple in Prey Veng province, Mr. Hun Sen said the policy would not solve all of Burma’s problems, but could help.

“Because in Myanmar now there are eight groups that have joined the cease-fire, but still seven other groups that have not joined yet,” he said, using another name for Burma.

“So I said I also want to send two or three people who are colleagues that used to join in the implementation of the win-win policy to study about Myanmar, about experiences there, and through that we can discuss—not to be teachers—but we can discuss related to ways of finding peace in order to put an end to armed conflict.”

Mr. Hun Sen said that it would not be the first time Cambodia has helped a neighboring country resolve armed tensions.

“We provided these experiences to Nepal related to cease-fire, demobilization and management of armed forces after there were elections,” he said, without elaborating on the help Cambodia provided. Nepal witnessed civil war between Maoist rebels and the monarchy between 1996 and 2006.

“Cambodia has many kinds of experiences and can be considered a very good example of a country that had many controlled zones—had many armed forces—and became a country that has only one controlled zone and only one army,” he said.