President Donald Trump said Friday he had successfully eased hostilities between Cambodia and Thailand, saying he could have preserved an earlier U.S.-brokered ceasefire that was on the brink of collapse.
“I just stopped a war,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this weekend. He said his actions were made possible by his willingness to impose steep tariffs on countries around the world, which he said gives the U.S. major trade and diplomatic clout.
The president said he spoke by phone with the prime ministers of both countries and now, “They’re doing a great job. They weren’t doing a great job.”
He said the conversations made him believe, “I think everything will be OK.”
Territorial disputes over where exactly the border lies between Southeast Asian neighbors led to five days of armed conflict in late July that left dozens of soldiers and civilians dead.
Trump threatened to withhold trading privileges from the two countries unless they stopped fighting, which could temporarily halt the conflict. The pact was then reaffirmed in more detail last month, when Trump attended an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Malaysia.
However, the ceasefire appeared on the verge of collapse this week when Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said a villager was killed after a shooting broke out along his country’s border with Thailand.
Manet said one civilian was killed and three others injured when Thai forces opened fire on civilians living in the Prey Chan area of Cambodia’s northwestern Banteay Meanchey province. The same village was the scene of a violent but not fatal confrontation between Thai security personnel and Cambodian villagers in September.
The Thai military said the latest incident began when Cambodian soldiers reportedly fired into a district in Thailand’s eastern province of Sa Kaeo. No Thai casualties have been reported.
Thailand and Cambodia have a history of enmity dating back centuries, when they were warring empires. Their competing territorial claims largely stem from a 1907 map drawn up when Cambodia was under French colonial rule, which Thailand says is inaccurate.
The ceasefire does not outline a path to resolve the underlying basis of the dispute, the long-standing disagreements over where the border should run.
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Megerian reported aboard Air Force One.
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