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Soldiers from Cambodia and Thailand on May 28 were involved in a short gunfire confrontation at a disputed area between Cambodia’s Preah Vihear and Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani. It resulted in the death of a Cambodian soldier.

Following the incident, the two sides had exchanged dialogues and agreed on a ceasefire.

Vietnam believes that all disagreements would be resolved through dialogues and peaceful methods, in accordance with Cambodia and Thailand’s agreements and ASEAN’s spirit of solidarity, spokeswoman of the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Pham Thu Hang said at a press meet on Thursday.

Cambodia and Thailand have, for a long time, been involved in border disputes in regions around the Preah Vihear temple. Tension escalated into conflicts in 2008, when Cambodia managed to lobby the UNESCO to make the temple a cultural heritage site of the country.

Subsequent conflicts in the next three years resulted in dozens of deaths and forced hundreds of thousands of people living along the border to evacuate. In 2011, armies of the two countries retreated from the non-militarized zone around the temple following a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The ICJ in 2013 stated that the region surrounding the temple belongs to Cambodia. Thailand accepted the decision and pledged to cooperate through bilateral mechanisms to resolve conflicts.

Hun Sen, president of the Cambodian Senate, said that: “The mobilization of our troops and heavy weapons to the border is not to wage war, but to prepare for a bad outcome in case the other side violates it. We have the right to defend ourselves,” Khmer Times reported.

He said the gun fight did not reflect the policies of the Thai government and the army, but merely decisions made by individuals.