ABSTRACT
In two years UN efforts would rebuild a country torn apart by civil war. At a meeting in Paris in October 1991, 19 Asian and European nations drew up an agenda for an enormous scheme of conflict settlement and national renewal, outlined strategies for implementing it, proposed the deployment of a force of 22,000, and put the whole thing into effect. Peacekeeping in the normal sense of prising the disputants apart was to be followed by peacemaking in the defined stages of cease-fire and demilitarization, the preparation and supervision of an election, and refugee rehabilitation. This was to be the UN in action after the traumatic disunion of the Cold War era. An unprecedented package would demonstrate international faith, compassion and resolve-and it would be worth every cent of a $1.9 million budget. It would create a wide role for the UN in setting up administrative structures to aid transition from intranational divide and conflict to a regularized and self-determined state. From conflict management to conflict resolution to promoting communal stability, the process would show what the UN could and should do as it approached its half-century. The laboratory for this huge experiment was Cambodia in South East Asia.
