White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claims US president Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Cambodia-Thailand ceasefire reached in Putrajaya today.
Cambodia and Thailand have agreed to a ceasefire from midnight following deadly clashes along their border which entered its fifth day and has claimed at least 35 lives.
The ceasefire, which was reached following a meeting at Seri Perdana chaired by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim as the Asean chairman this year, saw Cambodian prime minister Hun Manet and Thailand’s acting prime minister Phumtham Wechayachai meet for the first time since tension broke out between the two neighbours on July 24.
In a joint statement, the leaders said the meeting was co-organised by the US with the “active participation” of China.
“President Trump made this happen. Give him the Nobel Peace Prize!” said Leavitt in a post on X.
She included a screenshot of a New York Times article which stated that the negotiations were “US-backed talks”.
In a separate post on X, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US “applauds” the ceasefire announced today.
“President Trump and I remain committed to ending this conflict,” he said.
Before the ceasefire, Trump said he believed both Thailand and Cambodia would settle their differences after he told the countries’ leaders that he would not conclude trade deals with them unless they ended their fighting.
Hun Manet hails ‘brilliant result’
Apart from the ceasefire, Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to resume direct lines of communications between their prime ministers, foreign ministers and defence ministers.
In addition, the foreign and defence ministers of Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand have been instructed to develop a detailed mechanism for the implementation, verification and reporting of the ceasefire.
In a Facebook post, Hun Manet hailed the ceasefire as a “brilliant result” and thanked Anwar for his efforts to initiate the peace talks in Putrajaya.
“I believe that this ceasefire agreement between the Cambodian army and the Thai army is a key basis for building mutual trust and improvement of the situation towards normalcy in the future,” Manet said in a Facebook post upon his return from Malaysia this evening.
He also thanked Trump and the Chinese government for their support in reaching the ceasefire.
Thailand and Cambodia have a long history of diplomatic rows over an 817km stretch of their shared border.
More than 35 people have been killed and 270,000 displaced in both countries since the latest round of hostilities erupted on July 24.
Tensions between the two Asean nations have been simmering since May 28 after a Cambodian soldier was killed in a clash near the disputed Preah Vihear border area, about 360km from Bangkok.
