Was the CIA Director Recently in Phnom Penh?

Whether or not William Burns visited Cambodia, as former PM Hun Sen seemed to claim, U.S.-China competition has set off an intelligence race in Southeast Asia.

What exactly did Hun Sen just leak? On June 7, Cambodia’s former prime minister took to social media to explain why his country wouldn’t be sending a representative to the upcoming Ukraine-organized Global Peace Summit in Switzerland next weekend. According to Hun Sen, who last year handed over the premiership to his eldest son but still effectively rules the country from his new perch as Senate president, Cambodia’s decision wasn’t due to pressure from China, as was alleged, but because Phnom Penh reckons the summit is pointless without Russia’s participation.

Buried towards the end of the post, Hun Sen wrote that he had explained all of this “to the CIA director on June 2 and the U.S. Secretary of Defense on June 4 when they came to see me.”

In full: https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/was-the-cia-director-recently-in-phnom-penh/

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