US lifts aid restrictions on Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Feb 28 (Reuters) The United States has lifted a ban on development aid to the Cambodian government imposed after a bloody 1997 coup by co-Prime Minister Hun Sen against his royalist counterpart, the embassy said today.

The relaxation is clear evidence of a significant warming of relations between Phnom Penh and Washington at the same time as China is trying to build political and military ties in southeast Asia.

''The embassy here definitely sees that the bilateral relationship has been growing much closer and deeper over the past few years,'' an embassy spokesman said.

In the last decade, all US assistance to the war-scarred southeast Asian nation, still recovering from the Khmer Rouge ''Killing Fields'' of the 1970s, has had to be channeled through NGOs involved in social sectors such as health and human rights.

A US Navy frigate visited the Cambodian deep-sea port of Sihanoukville earlier this month, the first such visit in three decades.

REUTERS PDM RAI1257