Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday the framers of the 1993 Constitution made a mistake by specifying that the map developed by the French colonial authorities would be the only one legally valid for border demarcation.
The opposition has recently led a fierce campaign accusing the government of not using that map, leading Prime Minister Hun Sen to ask the U.N. to borrow its copy to compare with the one that the government uses.
On Thursday, Mr. Hun Sen said the selection of that map was poor because the pieces long stored in Phnom Penh have deteriorated, while the pieces at the U.N. may now in fact be lost.
“In 1980, we received 26 maps, and those 26 maps have not been found at the U.N. yet. Is this the mistake of Phnom Penh, or the U.N. administration?” Mr. Hun Sen asked.
“The maps kept in Cambodia have been scraped and drawn on,” he then explained, rueing the situation.
“The Cambodian Constitution was written with a mistake, a mistake that ties our own arms by putting in it the map printed between 1933 and 1953.”
