- Malaysia hosts conversations with us and China involvement.
- Truce to start midnight Monday.
- Cambodia PM thanks Trump, China for participating in tempo efforts.
The leaders of Cambodia and Thailand agreed to ceasefire on Monday effective midnight, in an attempt to bring their deadliest conflict for more than a decade after five days of hard fighting.
In the midst of an international effort to dampen the conflict, Thai and Cambodian leaders held conversations in Malaysia, hosting its Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the current President of ASEAN Regional Bloc, where both sides agreed to stop hostilities and resume direct communication.
Anwar said when he opened a press conference with the Thai and Cambodian leaders that there would be “an immediate and unconditional ceasefire with effect from midnight tonight. This is finally.”
The Southeast Asian neighbors accuse each other of starting the matches last week before escalating it with heavy artillery bombing and Thai air strikes along their 817 km (508 km) of earth boundary.
Anwar had proposed a ceasefire conversations shortly after a prolonged border border broke out in conflict on Thursday, and China and the United States also offered to help with negotiations.
US President Donald Trump called both leaders over the weekend and urged them to settle their differences and warned that he would not conclude trade agreements with them unless they ended the matches.
The tension between Thailand and Cambodia has been intensified since the killing of a Cambodian soldier during a short skirmish late May.
Both sides reinforced border troops in the midst of a completely diplomatic crisis that brought Thailand’s fragile coalition government to the brim of collapse.
“Today we have a very good meeting and very good results … It hopes to stop immediately the struggles that have caused many lost lives, injuries and also caused displacement of people,” she said manted, expressing appreciation to Trump and China for her efforts to participate in the process.
“We hope that the solutions that Prime Minister Anwar just announced will set a condition to advance to our bilateral discussion to return to the normality of the relationship and as a foundation for future shell of forces.”
Acting Thai Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, who had previously expressed doubts about Cambodia’s sincerity prior to the negotiations in Malaysia, Thailand said that a ceasefire would “be successfully performed in good faith by both sides”.
