CONFIDENTIAL
NOTES ON FAMILIARISATION TOUR: THAILAND 24 November 1 December 1980
General
1. The Embassy kept me very fully occupied from my arrival
on mid-morning on Monday 24 November to my concluding sessions with HM Ambassador and Mr Burns on the following Monday. The Embassy will be reporting (or may already have done so) on
the border trip, including a visit to Dien Del's military training camp and surrounding villages, just (so Mr Duggin
assured me) inside Cambodia, on Mr Asda Jayanama's (Head of
SEAD, MFA) comments on Thai-Laotian relations in particular,
and on the account of ICRC intentions given by their Senior Delegate in Bangkok.
2. I do not think that anything I saw or heard has done more than fine tune my existing perceptions, with one exception. I now have no illusion that the KPNLF amount to anything of substance militarily, or that they exercise any real leadership'
on the border: any support which we or other Western countries
give, eg. in insisting on their right to be heard at any
conference, or talking of them as 'the third force', should be clearly understood among ourselves at least as an attempt to complicate Vietnam's life rather than to reflect the true
situation on the ground. The KPNLF are at least several years from having a real military influence. On other points of particular prior interest, I have no clearer view of what the
Americans are up to on the ground, in spite of several hours with Mr Eland of KEG (including an evening in some of Bangkok's less salubrious bars). Nor have I come back any more prepared to accept the US Embassy's reporting from Bangkok (on Vietnam
in particular) at face value: Mr Carney their Vietnam-watcher
as good as admitted to me that all their Vietnam material was very carefully tailored for its impact on its US official
audience. There is also circumstantial evidence of French
meddling, though ostensibly without any official involvement:
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