BANGKOK: Defence Minister Sutin Klungsang said on Thursday (March 21) that he would raise the issue of PM2.5 pollution during his meeting with his Cambodian counterpart in Phnom Penh on Friday.
Sutin said he would meet Tea Seiha during the 16th General Border Committee (GBC) meeting to discuss several issues of bilateral cooperation between the two neighbouring countries, including the PM2.5 situation caused by farm leftover burning on the Cambodian side.
Some believed that Bangkok was hit by high levels of PM2.5 ultrafine dust on Wednesday night because the eastward wind blew smoke from burning farms in Cambodia into Thailand.
Sutin said the Thai government had sought cooperation from the Cambodian government to ask its farmers to minimise the burning of weeds and farm leftovers.
During a recent Cabinet meeting, the Thai government had discussed a measure to ban the import of corn from farms that used burning technique in their cultivation, Sutin revealed. The government was warned that it would be in breach of World Trade Organisation rules if Thailand banned the import of corn from Cambodia without enforcing the same prohibition in Thailand.
As a result, Sutin said, the Thai government would have to wait for the enactment of the clean air bill to prohibit farm burning in the country before it could slap an import ban from Cambodian farms that use burning as a cultivation method.
Sutin said he would alert his Cambodian counterpart during the GBC meeting about the new law so the Cambodian government could enforce measures to minimise farm burning.
The GBC is a bilateral mechanism established in 2006 to specifically address issues related to the two countries’ shared border.
Among other issues, Sutin said, he would discuss cooperation to crack down on call-centre gangs operating on Cambodian soil along the border and cooperation to clear land mines along the border.
Asked whether Pheu Thai Party leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra had discussed the PM2.5 issue when she visited Phnom Penh recently, Sutin said Paetongtarn had made the visit only to tighten ties between the two countries without raising key national issues.
Sutin said Paetongtarn did not discuss the boundary dispute with the Cambodian government either.
Paetongtarn is the youngest daughter of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is close to former Cambodian premier Hun Sen.
A group of nationalists alleged that the Shinawatra family would collude with the Hun Sen family to compromise on Thailand’s borders, especially surrender Koh Koot.
Sutin said Thais should not be worried as the government would not allow even a single inch to be grabbed by Cambodia.
The Thai minister said he had talked with the Cambodian government and had not heard about Phnom Penh’s intention to claim Kot Koot near Trat province from Thailand as rumoured.
Sutin added that the Foreign Ministry would be in charge of holding talks with Cambodia on boundary disputes while the National Energy Policy Council would be in charge of holding talks on shared interests in the overlapping claims areas in the Gulf of Thailand. - The Nation/ANN
