PHNOM PENH — United States Secretary of State John Kerry met Cambodian leaders yesterday, but failed to secure the country’s commitment to a more robust stance alongside the other member states in the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) against China’s pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong told reporters yesterday that Cambodia’s position on the South China Sea was unchanged — specifically, that individual countries should settle disputes among themselves without the involvement of ASEAN.

That mirrors China’s position that the 10-member regional bloc is not a party to territorial disputes, so rows should be resolved bilaterally.

“We want it open to negotiations, in the future, between countries who made claims in the South China Sea,” said Mr Namhong, who is also the country’s Foreign Minister.

“Cambodia is not a court that could judge that this island belongs to this or that country,” he added.

Mr Kerry’s meeting yesterday with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Mr Namhong comes a day after he paid a visit to neighbouring Laos, the current ASEAN chair.

In the lead-up to next month’s summit between US President Barack Obama and ASEAN leaders, Mr Kerry visited Laos and Cambodia as part of efforts to urge ASEAN to present a unified stance against Beijing’s claims on most of the South China Sea — through which more than US$5 trillion (S$7.1 trillion) in ship-borne trade passes every year.

LONG ARTICLE

read more: http://www.todayonline.com/world/cambodia-distances-itself-s-china-sea-dispute

Not sure Cambodia has anything in this. But when they're in need of help, the other countries will probably do in kind.

The Cambodians and the Chinese are good friends. When Pol Pot was in power he supplied rice to the Chinese and they in return supplied arms and other goodies. When Vietnam liberated Cambodia Pol Pot fled to Thailand and was accepted and embraced despite his dreadful humanitarian record . In the meantime the Chinese were peed off that their dear friend Pol was ousted and their rice supply dried up. Consequently they decided to have a go at Vietnam through the north which developed into the Sino-Vietnamese war in 1975.

So there is one good reason why Cambodia remains loyal to the Chinese even though their waters are remote from the area of dispute.