10,000 Viet Troops Pull Out of Cambodia

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia — An estimated 10,000 Vietnamese troops pulled out of the strategic western border province of Battambang on Thursday and headed for home as part of Vietnam’s sixth partial troop withdrawal since its 1978 invasion of Cambodia.

The troops were given a send-off by a few hundred Battambang townspeople who waved paper Vietnamese and Cambodian flags and played Cambodian folk music.

The Vietnamese are scheduled to arrive in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, on Sunday and then, along with another 10,000 Vietnamese troops from other areas of Cambodia, are to cross the border into Vietnam.

The pullout leaves an estimated 120,000 Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia. Vietnam has long insisted that it will withdraw its troops by 1990 and would like a political settlement based on participation by its allies in Phnom Penh.

Called Troop Rotations

Western diplomats and non-Communist leaders in Southeast Asia have criticized such pullouts as staged events, charging that the troops were quietly being replaced once journalists have left the country.

A neutral diplomat in Phnom Penh said he thought the Vietnamese pullout would be genuine this time because Hanoi wants the Cambodian government to bear more of the burden of the fighting.

“To make this just a troop rotation would send the wrong signals to Phnom Penh, that it can continue to let the Vietnamese do most of the fighting,” he said.

Many of the Vietnamese soldiers, packed into a motley collection of jeeps, city buses and open trucks, said Thursday they had served in Cambodia for more than eight years--some without any home leave.

They took with them half a dozen American-made 155-millimeter howitzers, some of them 22 years old, and even more ancient Soviet-made anti-aircraft weapons.

The procession included no tanks or armored vehicles.

Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia on Christmas Day, 1978, and drove out the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot--considered responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians by execution, disease and malnutrition during the Khmer Rouge rule after the fall of a U.S.-backed government in 1975.

The Khmer Rouge guerrilla resistance against the Vietnamese is concentrated along Cambodia’s western border with Thailand.

“Even though our enemy remains active against the Peoples’ Republic of Kampuchea (Cambodia), we are still conducting our partial withdrawal,” said Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Xuan Hoa, commander of the 94th divisional group that pulled out of Battambang.

Hoa said his troops had killed 8,705 Cambodian resistance fighters and captured 6,421 since his forces reached Battambang in January, 1979.

Lt. Gen. Hul Savon, Cambodia’s 4th Regional commander, said the Vietnamese pullout was possible because the Hanoi-backed government “has been able to strengthen the (Cambodian) armed forces in both quantity and quality.”

Vietnam and Phnom Penh have said they will never allow the return of Pol Pot or his top lieutenants in the Khmer Rouge.

Although led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the tripartite U.N.-recognized Cambodian resistance coalition government is dominated by the Khmer Rouge.

Diplomatic sources in Phnom Penh said Cambodian Premier Hun Sen would leave shortly for his first meeting with Sihanouk, expected next week near Paris.