PHUM THAMAI, Cambodia -- Vietnam's annual dry season offensive has been thwarted by anti-Hanoi guerrillas who are successfully cutting supply lines and ambushing troops, Prince Norodom Sihanouk said.
'The Vietnamese offensive has been delayed because we have gone on the offensive,' said Sihanouk, president of the Coalition of Democratic Kampuchea, which has been trying to oust Vietnamese troops from Cambodia.
'We have been attacking them all during the rainy season and that has delayed their dry season offensive,' he said Thursday. 'We are more and more successful in the liberation of Kampuchea (Cambodia).
'We liberated some areas of Kampuchea during the past rainy season and we are sure to be successful in liberating more areas.'
Sihanouk traveled to a Khmer Rouge base inside Cambodia Thursday to accept the credentials of ambassadors from Yugoslavia and Egypt as envoys to his government-in-exile.
The ceremony took place at Phum Thamai, a Khmer Rouge stronghold of about 4,000 people located 12 miles south of the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet.
Sihanouk accepted the credentials of Ambassadors Ismet Redzic of Yugoslavia and Ihab Mohamed Zaki Sorour of Egypt.
'We are at war -- a war of national liberation,' Sihanouk told the Yugoslav ambassador. 'The enemy, they are not very far from here.'
The prince said guerrilla forces loyal to his coalition were prepared to repel the Vietnamese offensive. Vietnam has intensified military activity each dry season since its invasion and occupation of Cambodia in December 1978.
Sihanouk, along with coalition partners Son Sann of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front and Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge, have claimed important military successes recently against Hanoi's Soviet-backed, 170,000-strong army in Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge, with an estimated 40,000 guerrillas armed by China, has attempted to blunt Hanoi's annual offensive by cutting supply lines and ambushing Vietnamese troop convoys.
Thai military sources said the less powerful nationalist factions controlled by Sihanouk and Son Sann also have taken the initiative recently against Vietnamese positions in western Cambodia.
