After weeks of violent border conflict and Trump's failure to intervene, Thailand and Cambodia sign a ceasefire

Thailand and Cambodia agreed on Saturday to end weeks of violent border clashes that have turned into the worst conflict in years between the two Southeast Asian countries, including fighter jet missions, exchanges of missile attacks and artillery barrages.

“Both sides have agreed to maintain current troop deployments without further movements,” the defense ministers said in a joint statement on the ceasefire, which will take effect at noon (0500 GMT).

“Any reinforcement of troops would increase tensions and negatively affect long-term efforts to resolve the situation,” reads the statement published on social media by the Cambodian Ministry of Defense.

The agreement, signed by Thai Defense Minister Natthaphon Nakrphanit and his Cambodian counterpart, Tea Seiha, ended 20 days of fighting that left at least 101 dead and displaced more than half a million people in both countries.

Clashes flared up again in early December after the failure of a truce brokered by US President Donald Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to end an earlier round of fighting.

For more than a century, Thailand and Cambodia have disputed sovereignty over various undemarcated points along the 817-kilometer (508-mile) land border — a dispute that has occasionally degenerated into clashes and fighting.

This truce will be monitored by a team of observers from the regional bloc of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as through direct coordination between the two countries, Natthaphon said.

“At the same time, at the political level, there will be direct communication between the defense minister and the chief of the armed forces, in the case of both sides,” he told reporters.

Trump's intervention

Tensions between the two countries peaked in July this year, when their forces clashed for five days along parts of the border, killing at least 48 people and displacing 300,000, before Trump intervened to impose a ceasefire.

That truce was violated in early December, with the two sides accusing each other of actions that led to the clashes.

After the conflict reignited, neither Anwar – the current ASEAN president – ​​nor Trump were able to broker another truce as fighting spread from the forested regions near Laos to the coastal provinces of the Gulf of Thailand.

The new round of talks came after a special meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, followed by three days of talks between the warring parties at a border checkpoint where the two defense ministers met on Saturday.

In their joint statement, the ministers agreed on the return of displaced people from affected border areas, while stressing that neither side would use force against civilians.

Thailand will also return 18 Cambodian soldiers in its custody after the July clashes if the ceasefire is fully maintained for 72 hours, according to the agreement.

Saturday's agreement, however, specified that the deal would not impact on ongoing border demarcation activities between the two countries, leaving the task of resolving disputed areas to existing bilateral mechanisms.

“War and clashes do not make the two countries or the two peoples happy,” Thai Air Force Chief Marshal Prapas Sornjaidee told reporters. “I want to emphasize that the Thai people and the Cambodian people are not in conflict with each other,” he added.