Starting off this week's wrap of news from Cambodia, a press release from the World Bank about their approval of a $36.25 million grant for decentralization and related reforms.

The World Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy for Cambodia 2005 - 2008, endorsed by the Board in May 2005, recognizes governance issues as the primary obstacle to growth, poverty reduction, and aid effectiveness, and supports decentralization as a means to improve local governance and accountability.

Sounds like gobbledegook to me, and when I read about throwing $15 million at something called the "Poverty Reduction Growth Operation" (PRGO), I can't help wondering how many hefty paychecks come with administering such a mouthful.

The head of the world back, Robert Zoellick, will be meeting with Asian finance ministers next week, and will focus on, "what's been achieved, where are the question marks in the system".

This, about the 10th anniversary of Myanmar joining the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) points out the inconsistency of the group by recalling how in 1997, it deferred Cambodia's joining because of Hun Sen's coup.

Compared to Burma's regime, Cambodia isn't looking all that bad these days, so it seems unfair that it gets a pass.

Here's some disturbing news that suggests that Cambodia has become one of the main sources of weapons for Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels.

"Cambodia is one of the most significant single source of weapons for the insurgent group," Jane's Intelligence Review said without naming any sources in a report published online last week.

A spokesman for the interior ministry say this activity must be "small scale", but given the fact that Cambodia is "awash in arms after decades of civil war", and the fact that the borders are very porous, there could be lots of weapons moving around from the country.

On the development front, the list of companies spending millions to set up in Cambodia grows daily, adding a Japanese company investing $800 million in a project to plant castor beans as a source for a bio-diesel plant.

The company plans to start with 48,000 hectares, but eventually wants 500,000 hectares in castor beans. (That's 1,235,526.9 acres ... almost 2000 square miles, or about half the size of Los Angeles County which runs from Malibu to Clairmont, from Long Beach to Lancaster, just for an idea of the area we're looking at to be covered in castor beans.)

Ack! Mono-culture!

Just as an aside, Japan in the largest donor country for Cambodia.

And watch out Cambodia ... the tourists are really coming! In efforts to bring in more of those tourist dollars, yen, pounds, euro, and more, the country is getting set to get into BIG EVENTS. Coming up, the Johnnie Walker Cambodia Gold Open and ASEAN boat races in Phnom Penh, for starters.

Long gone will be the days when the Water Festival is a local Cambodian event drawing in people from around the country for a celebration of all things Khmer. Soon there will be sponsored celebrity skyboxes, or something. Sheesh.

If you're near Seattle ... which by the way covers an area of only 84 square miles ... the schedule of events for the Seattle Sihanoukville Sister City Association is filling up, so check out them out. From a Potluck picnic in August, to a "Night of Hope Benefit Dinner and Auction" in October for Stop Exploitation Now, there's a lot going on in the Pacific Northwest.

Read more about it here.

A couple of stories of Khmer Rouge survivors were in the news this week. This one about a musician ... the "Ray Charles of Cambodia" ... who plays the chapei dong veng and is working on a jazz album, and this about the only woman known to have survived a stay at the Toul Sleng torture center ... S21, now known as the Genocide Museum.