Khmer Voice

I want to fly
I shall no more cry
This girl has to die
Her tears shall also dry

I want to start a new a page
I don’t want to remain in the same stage
People are changing so can I?
No one was born perfect I still can give a try

So dear enemies, dear neighbors I no more care
It no more hurts me whatever you people say
So now tell me something I really don’t know
Something which I never heard before

Copyright © 2008 ZAINAB

A long-running border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia has just flared up, with soldiers exchanging shots for the first time. The BBC’s South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head looks at what caused this escalation of tension.

Troops exchanged fire for the first time on Wednesday

At the end of a day when two Cambodian soldiers were killed, several wounded on both sides, and 10 Thai soldiers reportedly taken prisoner, the language cooled down.

Instead of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s threat of all-out war, to turn the area around the disputed Preah Vihear temple into a “zone of death”, there was a statement from Foreign Minister Hor Namhong describing the shootout as “an incident between soldiers, not an invasion”, a problem that could be solved.

And from the Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat: “Cambodia is a good neighbour. We will use peaceful means”.

A robin is not an eagle,

And a common crow is unlike the noble crane,

Yet, any bird, on the wing,

Is ever a mysterious, magical thing,

Of beauty and wonder…

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Hun Chea, a nephew of Cambodia’s prime minster, was speeding along a busy downtown street a few days ago when he ran down a man on a motorbike.

Phnom Penh’s streets are teeming with motorbikes, hundreds of them, criss-crossing busy traffic without seeming to look or care where they are going. Collisions are inevitable. But that’s not the point of this story.

Hun was tearing down the street at high speed when he hit the biker, witnesses reported, and his car ripped off an arm and a leg. The biker, Sam Sabo, was killed. Hun began to drive off, but running over the motorbike had shredded a tire. He had to pull over, so there he sat in his big black Cadillac Escalade SUV.

Now, listen to how the Phnom Penh Post newspaper described the events that followed.

By: H.D.S Greenway
Published: August 5, 2008

There is nothing like a disputed place to bring incendiary nationalism to the boil. The mother of all examples is Jerusalem. Much of the energy of Europe was taken up in trying to wrest it from Muslims from the 11th to the 14th centuries. Today we are told there will be no progress in settling the 100-year dispute between Jews and Arabs in the Palestinian territories this year because of disagreements over the holy city.

But nations can face off over less exalted territory. Think of the predawn assault by Spanish commandos in July 2002, to force Moroccan soldiers off an uninhabited rock in the Mediterranean. Secretary of State Colin Powell got on the phone to calm the situation, and no one got hurt. The Spanish call the islet “Perejil,” while the Moroccans call it “Leila,” and both think it’s theirs.