Upsetting the Balance

Violent political demonstrations are a phenomenon that only rarely visit the drowsy, sylvan Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. They have been directed against foreign embassies there only three times in memory--once against the British and twice against the Americans. Last week, six years to the day after Cambodian demonstrators attacked the American embassy in Phnom Penh to protest the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia, mobs once again rampaged through the city. This time, however, their targets were the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong embassies.

Careful Turnaround. The demonstrations began in the eastern-border province of Svay Rieng, long a vital refitting and recuperation base for Communist troops operating in South Viet Nam. Three days later, they spread to the capital as thousands of placard-carrying, student-age protesters attacked the North Vietnamese embassy, tossing furniture through doors and windows, and setting fire to several official cars. At the Viet Cong embassy, windows were smashed, doors were torn from their hinges, and the lawn was strewn with debris. The demonstrations continued for three more days, spreading to Vietnamese-owned businesses.

The trouble broke out two months after Cambodia's chief of state, Prince

Norodom Sihanouk, left for treatment in France of a blood ailment. Sihanouk, who broke off relations with the U.S. over Viet Nam in 1965, has been executing a careful diplomatic turnaround since Washington began its withdrawal program. At the same time he has been voicing serious concern over the Communists' continued use of Cambodian territory as a base of operations.

Nevertheless, the outbursts of anti-Communist violence, which obviously had the sanction of authorities on the scene, seemed to go much farther than the Prince's delicate balancing act permitted. With an estimated 40,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in Sihanouk's country, many of them protecting the southern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi is certain to be alarmed by any threat to its Cambodian sanctuary.

In Sihanouk's absence, the government has been run by Premier Lon Nol, formerly a top-ranking general, and by Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, the Deputy Premier. Both are right-leaning anti-Communists who could be seeking to consolidate their own power by carrying the policy of coolness toward Hanoi and the Viet Cong farther than Sihanouk would wish. When informed of the riots, the Prince accused "certain personalities" of trying to throw Cambodia "into the arms of an imperialist capitalist power." He warned that he could be toppled by a right-wing coup.

Welcome Presence. It is possible that the cagey Prince gave the riots his tacit approval as a way of putting pressure on the Communists to reduce their forces in Cambodia. Sihanouk gave some support to that theory in an interview in Paris with TIME Correspondent Roland Flamini. Preparing to depart for home via Moscow and Peking, he said that he would ask the Russians and Chinese "to exercise friendly pressure on the Viet Cong and Vietnamese not to infiltrate our borders." Unless the Communist powers do so, Sihanouk went on, the result will be the "Americanization of Cambodia." Sihanouk no longer appears to be overly worried about the likelihood of Americanization. "Continued American presence in the region is good for Cambodia," he told Flamini, "because it maintains the balance of power."

Five years ago, Sihanouk feared that the U.S. might extend the war into eastern Cambodia. Today, he has reason to fear that the Communists have dug into that region permanently: some Communist troops have built houses and staked out farms near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Hanoi obviously has no intention of abandoning its bases--despite a Cambodian government demand at week's end flatly that all Communist troops leave within 48 hours. Cambodia, of course, lacks the muscle to enforce that order. In any event, whoever was behind the riots, it is clear that both Sihanouk and his government's leaders view the Communist presence as the unpleasant new reality of Southeast Asia.

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