ABSTRACT
The civil war in Cambodia was a military conflict between four national leaderships that had governed the country. This chapter considers the interaction between external mediators and the key Cambodian parties during the process of peace negotiations in Cambodia, 1989-1993. Of various factors, it highlights the negative consequences of external mediators' failure to develop close and constant channels of communication. More serious peace talks began at the end of 1989 under the advocacy of the international actors, and the development of the peace processes was largely determined by the interactions between the Cambodian factional leaders and their international counterparts in mediation. During the first phase of the peace negotiation, third-party mediators succeeded in pressurising the Cambodian factions to consent to their core demands on demilitarisation and the transitional authority. In the next phase of the peace process, China began to assume a greater role, while the Western mediators exhibited much less enthusiasm in promoting the progress of the conflict resolution.
