(The following communication from Pnompenh appeared in the December 2 issue of the French revolutionary socialist weekly Rouge.J
Within the context of operation Cambodia Solidarity, four cargo planes chartered by eight French and ten foreign organizations arrived in Pnompenh between November 18 and December 2. They carried a total of 160 tons of food supplies, medicine, and other materials.
The shipment was divided up between the ministries of health and commerce and the Cambodian Red Cross. The representatives of the various participating organizations, who were present in Pnompenh, helped with the unloading, transport, and distribution of the cargo.
Accompanying officials of the ministry of health, they distributed foodstuffs and medicines in three provincial hospitals
Kompong
(Takeo, Kompong Speu, Chnang) and to various rural dispensaries.
They verified the enormity of the needs, the destitution of the hospitals and dispen saries, the crying lack of cadres-for the most part massacred by the Khmer Rouge regime. They noted that despite the unimaginable difficulties, the country has been reorganizing itself little by little, especially through the efforts of surviving cadres, the population as a whole, and the government of Kampuchea.
They ask that in France and in Europe that solidarity current that has developed should be intensified in order to provide the population of Kampuchea with the means to assure its own rebirth.
Prompenh, December 8, 1979
The Representatives of: Catholic Committee Against Hunger, Ecumenical Aid Service, French Committee for Medical and Health Aid to the Cambodian Population, Ecumenical Church Council, TROCAIRE (Ireland), Development and Peace (Canada).
(The following article by New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal appeared in the January 13 issue of that newspaper.J
Soviet stevedores are helping to unload international relief supplies in the Cambodian port of Kompong Som, according to the head of a Quaker aid group who recently toured parts of Cambodia.
David L. Elder, coordinator of Southeast Asia programe for the American Friends Service Committee, said he saw and photographed some of the estimated 100 to 200 Russians unloading Unicef-purchased Japanese trucks at the port during a nine-day visit that began Dec. 15. The Russians were living on a ship in the port, he said at a briefing Thursday in Quaker House near the United Nations.
He said that if he had to cite one "lemon" in the aid effort it would be the Soviet export of corn to Cambodia. The Cambodians despise it, he said.
Disputing earlier charges by the White House and a private aid group that the Soviet-supported Vietnamese occupiers of Cambodia were blocking the distribution of relief supplies, Mr. Elder said he had found evidence to the contrary. "There is a willingness, desire and urgency to move supplies," he contended, adding that the effort was hampered by a lack of trucks and administrators.
He said he saw no sign that the Vietnamese Army or the Cambodian militia was diverting relief supplies for its own use. He and his aides were allowed to wander among rice fields in Kompong Speu Province, he said, leading him to discount the allegations of refugees that the fields were mined to reserve the harvest for the soldiers.
Outside militarily contested regions, the immediate danger of further famine has receded, he said, although after the current rice harvest—a poor one-is completed in March there will be a serious gap until the next harvest in December.
"We bought some time," Mr. Elder said, "but there's another cliff ahead."
He agreed with other aid officials that "mountains of supplies," including rice and Soviet soap, were backed up in ware houses in Kompong Som. But he said he saw some Unicef medical supplies at a hospital in Takeo, about 50 miles south of Phnom Penh, and other food and medical supplies in other areas.
More trucks to move the supplies were arriving, he said. The several dozen vehicles he watched the Russians unload were part of the 260 Japanese and English trucks that were contributed by Unicef and
Oxfam, he said. In addition, he said, he saw the first 150 trucks of a Soviet delivery of 300.
Mr. Elder, who insisted that his account was not colored by any fear of offending the Cambodians or Vietnamese and thus jeopardizing his agency's work, also re ported growing signs of recovery in Phnom Penh. Emptied of its millions by the Communists after their 1975 takeover,
Mr.
Elder related, the capital is now bustling with truck traffic, sidewalk vendors and people bartering. The only currency used for purchases, he said, is the Vietnamese dong, with some transactions in gold.
His Government interpreter put the city's population at 200,000, a figure Mr. Elder said appeared credible.