Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith will pay a visit to Cambodia tomorrow to try to resolve the issues surrounding the countries’ shared border.
PM Thongloun is making his visit at the invitation of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, after the Cambodian Foreign Minister, Prak Sokhonn, visited Laos last week.
The two leaders will discuss bilateral cooperation, with a particular focus on solving the border issue.
Tensions have risen in regard to border demarcation on a few occasions over the last few years, most notably in 2017 when Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a warning to the Lao military.
In 2018, Prime Minister Hun Sen visited Vientiane following another flareup at the border and agreed with Lao Prime Minister Thongloun that the two countries would undertake joint patrols of border regions.
Last month, Lao and Cambodian troops confronted each other in an area along a separate shared border, but the situation was quickly stabilized after the prime ministers of each country spoke to each other by phone.
On August 27, at the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Anousine Khattiyalath, Deputy Head of the National Boundary Committee said in a statement that the area in question was stable, and two countries were not engaged in any kind of standoff, and troops from both sides officially withdrew two days later.
Prior to the withdrawal, a meeting was held between Lao and Cambodian forces, in which the two sides agreed to form a joint committee to observe and supervise the withdrawal of troops from the two sides, assigning five persons each.
