The meeting produced no breakthrough, and nobody had expected one. Still, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet left their talks in the Philippine city of Cebu on May 7 with an agreement to keep talking about the border.
They met on the sidelines of the 48th ASEAN Summit. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose government chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), organized the session and sat in. The two leaders agreed to have their foreign ministers work on measures to firm up a fragile ceasefire.
At a press conference afterward, Anutin said the ministers would pursue “practical confidence-building measures, starting with measures where we have common ground.” He told reporters, as quoted by Nikkei Asia: “Thailand and Cambodia must move forward together, step by step, in the same direction.”
Marcos: “time for peace”
Marcos said the foreign ministers had agreed to show restraint and engage constructively. “This was possible because of a very clear, fervent belief by both leaders that it is time for peace and no longer a time for war,” he said. He also confirmed that the ASEAN Observer Team will go on monitoring the ceasefire at the border, with its mandate extended by three months, to July.
Manet restated Cambodia’s line that the border “cannot be changed, nor determined by force or through fait accompli.” He asked for immediate implementation of the joint statement issued with the December ceasefire, above all a restart of survey and demarcation work by the Joint Border Commission. “Cambodia believes this is a peaceful path towards a fair solution for both parties,” he said.
A poor starting point
Relations between Bangkok and Phnom Penh sit at a low after armed conflict broke out in July and again in December of last year, with Thai air strikes and heavy exchanges of artillery and rockets across the disputed land border. A ceasefire agreed in late December has held on paper, but soldiers remain posted along long stretches of the frontier. The border is mostly closed, which has hit trade hard.
The prime ministers had not met since the ceasefire in Malaysia, and the Joint Border Commission has not convened since October. Not even the peace accord signed in October, with U.S. President Donald Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim present, stopped the fighting that returned in December.
The talks came two days after Thailand cancelled a 2001 memorandum with Cambodia on joint offshore energy exploration in the Gulf of Thailand. The document set up a framework for talks on oil and gas in overlapping maritime claims and for drawing maritime boundaries. Anutin denied the cancellation was tied to the border conflict. Cambodia said it was disappointed and would seek a formal settlement of the overlapping claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The political ground in Thailand may be firmer than it was in December. Anutin won re-election decisively in February, after encouraging and drawing on the nationalist surge that came with the conflict, and the Thai army’s seizure of small, symbolically important pockets of territory during the December fighting has softened pressure from nationalist lobbies. In Phnom Penh, the economic cost of the conflict is starting to bite. Thailand’s continued hold on border territory is something the Cambodian government has raised repeatedly in recent months.
Sources
- Thai, Cambodian PMs Agree to ‘Confidence Building’ Measures on Border
- 2025 Cambodian–Thai border crisis – Wikipedia
