Waldegrave makes tacit admission of SAS link to Khmer Rouge

Commons debate: The fighting in Cambodia

Judy Jones, Independent, 14 November 1989, page 10

A TACIT admission from a Foreign Office minister that SAS forces had trained Cambodian troops fighting alongside the notorious Khmer Rouge was claimed by Labour MPs in the Commons last night.

William Waldegrave, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, provoked uproar on the Labour benches when he sidestepped a direct Opposition challenge to say whether the SAS had been training troops in Cambodia. "You know I will give no answer," he told Gerald Kaufman, the Opposition's foreign affairs spokesman.

However, Dale Campbell-Savours (Lab, Workington) asserted: "You answered a similar question about Zimbabwe. Will you withdraw your words and say 'I refuse to answer'?"

The minister replied: "You make my point for me. There have been no special forces ever involved in Zimbabwe."

Labour MPs shouted triumphantly "There's the answer!" as Mr Kaufman again intervened to ask for further clarification: "What you are saying is that there are special forces involved. If there were not, you would be able to answer the question."

Mr Waldegrave accused his Labour shadow of making a bogus "schoolboy debating point" and said: "We have never, ever commented on the role of the special forces - neither to say yes or no."

He was responding to Opposition demands to repudiate the Khmer Rouge representative at tomorrow's United Nations debate on Cambodia and to increase substantially humanitarian aid to that country.

Opening the Labour-led debate on Cambodia, Mr Kaufman maintained there was a real danger of the Khmer Rouge returning to power. He called for a radical change in Government policy now that Vietnam had withdrawn its troops from the country.

"The murder, torture and suppression of human rights and freedoms associated with the name of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge can be compared in scale and horror only with that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

"The British government has played an active part in assisting the armies dominated by the Khmer Rouge and in seeking to remove from power in Cambodia the Hun Sen regime, which is the legal and de facto government of that country.

"The suffering people of Cambodia are being punished for an American defeat in Vietnam. Led by the United States, with the United Kingdom compliantly following, the world community has blacklisted Cambodia."

The UK had adopted a "deplorably shifty attitude towards the Khmer Rouge. Margaret Thatcher said last year that there was a "more reasonable" element within the Khmer Rouge and this would have to play some part in a future government of Cambodia.

Yet pressed in a recent television interview to identify any of these "reasonable" individuals, Lord Brabazon of Tara, a Minister of State at the Foreign Office, had been unable to do so.

Recently in the Commons, the Prime Minister and her deputy, Sir Geoffrey Howe, repeatedly dodged questions over the possible role of the SAS in training troops in Cambodia. The country would conclude those allegations were true unless the Government gave an unequivocal denial.

Mr Waldegrave reasserted the Government's policy to support moves towards self-determination by the Cambodian people. If a protracted civil war was to be avoided, "it would be better to include all the factions in the interim authority rather than exclude the Khmer Rouge and risk their return to guerilla warfare in the jungle".

He insisted: "We wish to see peace and stability restored to Cambodia through a comprehensive political settlement. I do not believe the Cambodian people would willingly choose either the murderous Khmer Rouge or the ex-Khmer Rouge who constitute the present regime in Phnom Penh. What we need are free and fair elections and our diplomacy will be directed towards bringing that about." Britain never had and never would, support the Khmer Rouge.

Sir Russell Johnston, for the Liberal Democrats, praised the journalist John Pilger in alerting the public to the situation in Cambodia.

He added: "If the Government is serious about helping Cambodia, the best way it can move forward is to establish links with the existing Phnom Penh government and support a negotiated peace settlement."

A Labour motion condemning the Government's policy was rejected by 258 votes to 192.

• In a written answer last night Francis Maude, the Foreign Office minister, told Ann Clwyd, Labour's overseas development spokeswoman, that no British representative had visited Cambodia since Vietnam's invasion in 1979.
• A plea by Sir Russell Johnston for an emergency Commons debate on the implications of events in East Germany for foreign policy was turned down by the Speaker, Bernard Weatherill.

Pailin recaptured, page 15

JUDY JONES Parliamentary Correspondent

Related

• British SAS trained Khmer Rouge in land mines - an extract from a book of reporting From a 2005 book Tell me no lies edited by John Pilger
• John Pilger's reporting collected in British Library 9 - 10 December 2017 BL documentary festival with John Pilger to mark acquisition of digital archive
• Reporter Simon O'Dwyer-Russell's obituary in Sunday Telegraph, 16 December 1990 ...“All this, plus a wide range of friends in military circles, gave him unrivalled access to both the Armed Forces and the security services at all levels and” ...
• Times article: Journalist dies Times, 10 December 1990, page 2 (Simon O'Dwyer-Russell “died of a heart attack”, aged 29)
• Private Eye article: Private Eye reports British military training for Uzbekistan Private Eye, 10 June 2005, number 1134, page 6
• Guardian article: UK trained secret Swiss force Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 20 September 1991, page 7

External links

• Guardian article: Butcher of Cambodia set to expose Thatcher's role Jason Burke, Guardian, 9 January 2000 (“Ta Mok, one of Pol Pot's genocidal henchman, who faces trial, tells Jason Burke in Phnom Penh he will expose the West's part in training the Khmer Rouge”)
• Hansard: Cambodia Volume 160: debated on Monday 13 November 1989 Hansard, 13 November 1989 on hansard.parliament.uk
• Declassified UK article: Revealed: UK troops ‘secretly operating in Yemen’ Naseh Shaker, Phil Miller and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 6 July 2021 (“Britain has a secret detachment of up to 30 troops in Yemen, where they are training Saudi forces”...)