Hun Sen Seeks Official Maps for Vietnam Border from UN

Prime Minister Hun Sen has written to the UN Secretary-General to request an official map that would show proper border demarcation between Cambodia and Vietnam. The request comes following a clash between pro-opposition activists and Vietnamese security personnel near the border in Svay Rieng province last month. The maps that Cambodia currently uses in border talks with Vietnam are highly controversial, as is any dealing with the border in general. Cambodia has over the centuries lost land to its larger, more powerful neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam, and encroachment issues tend to provoke strong nationalistic fervor among many everyday Cambodians. That makes it a hot button issue for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, which has in the past included anti-Vietnamese rhetoric to its politics. Hun Sen wrote to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that he was requesting the official maps to quell potential “extreme nationalism and ill intent,” due to confused public opinion. VOA Khmer's Neou Vannarin reports from Phnom Penh.