Gen Nattaphon Narkphanit, Thailand’s outgoing Minister of Defence, told officials at a farewell ceremony on April 3 that he had personally urged his Cambodian counterpart, Gen Tea Seiha, to withdraw troops before both rounds of border clashes in 2025. The request was refused, he said, and Thailand had to prepare to engage.
No independent record of this communication has surfaced. Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence has not publicly addressed the claim.
What is on the record is Tea Seiha’s statement to Cambodianess on July 3, 2025, three weeks before the first armed clashes broke out on July 24: no official or unofficial communication had taken place with the Thai side since June 5. If Nattaphon’s withdrawal request preceded the July round, it either occurred before June 5, making it a distant precedent rather than proximate diplomacy, or after, contradicting Tea Seiha’s account. Nattaphon did not specify dates, a channel, or participants. The claim remains single-source.
A direct minister-to-minister communication channel did exist after the December ceasefire. Khaosod English reported on February 23, 2026, that Nattaphon had called Tea Seiha directly over border fires and troop discipline. The post-ceasefire contact makes the absence of any documented pre-clash contact more conspicuous, not less.
The farewell speech presented the conflict as reluctant Thai engagement after diplomacy failed. The documentary record of what happened under Nattaphon’s authority complicates that framing on multiple axes.
When clashes resumed on December 7, 2025, Thailand’s official account stated Cambodian forces opened fire first at 14:15, injuring two Thai soldiers, and Thailand returned fire at 14:16. Cambodia’s account, issued the same day through AKP, stated Thai troops opened fire at approximately 14:15 at Prolean Thmar, that Cambodia did not return fire, and that Cambodia notified the ASEAN Observer Team. No public AOT report on the December 7 incident has been released.
Lt Gen Boonsin Padklang, then commander of Thailand’s Second Army Region, publicly admitted in November 2025 that he had defied a government ceasefire order during the July clashes, continuing operations for several days to reclaim what he described as encroached land. The admission was reported by Nation Thailand and corroborated by Khmer Times. Boonsin was subsequently summoned by the Thai Senate’s border affairs committee. He did not attend. In December 2025, he received the rank of General as a special case and was appointed advisor to the Army Chief.
Nattaphon’s farewell speech did not mention Boonsin, the insubordination, the Senate summons, or the promotion. The entire trajectory from defiance of civilian authority to institutional reward occurred within his tenure as Defence Minister.
Nattaphon also told the ceremony that force is increasingly being used to resolve disputes globally, citing the Middle East, and suggested Thailand may need to adapt. “Victory without fighting is best,” he said, “but if we have to fight, we must win.”
Thailand is a signatory to the ASEAN Charter, whose Article 2(2)(d) commits member states to the “renunciation of aggression and of the threat or use of force or other actions in any manner inconsistent with international law.” The Joint Statement of the 3rd Special General Border Committee, which Nattaphon himself co-signed with Tea Seiha on December 27, 2025, commits both parties to “refrain from the threat or use of force” and to “peaceful settlement of disputes.” It requires both sides to maintain current troop deployments without further movement and not to increase forces along the entire border.
The farewell ceremony took place on April 3. That same day, Cambodia’s state news agency AKP reported that Thai forces had deployed two armored vehicles and approximately 70 personnel at O’Smach on April 2, reinforcing barbed wire without prior notification. Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence said it had immediately contacted Thailand’s Army Region 2. The Thai Navy spokesman had said days earlier that containers and reinforced barriers were consistent with paragraph 2 of the Joint Statement. Cambodia’s government spokesman Pen Bona stated on March 25 that Cambodia adhered to the Joint Statement and did not recognize border alteration resulting from force.
Cambodia’s January 2 filing to the United Nations Security Council demanded Thailand “withdraws all Thai military personnel and equipment from the territory of the Kingdom of Cambodia” and “complies in good faith with the terms and spirit of the Ceasefire Agreement.” The O’Smach deployment occurred three months after that filing.
Nattaphon served as Defence Minister from September 19, 2025, until the new cabinet was announced on March 31, 2026. His successor, Lt Gen Adul Bunthamcharoen, who served as his deputy, inherits the GBC co-chairmanship, the December 27 commitments, the O’Smach ground posture, and the UN demand that remains unanswered.
