Foreign Minister Hor Namhong yesterday took a visit by Lowell, Massachusetts, Mayor Rodney Elliott to offer an impromptu history lesson, he said at a press conference yesterday.

With Elliot in Phnom Penh for a visit this week, during which the US city will become sister cities with the Cambodian capital, Namhong told reporters that he and Elliott had discussed Vietnam’s role in ousting the Khmer Rouge regime from the Kingdom.

“Rodney M Elliott was so interested about how Cambodia has been developing,” he said. “Cambodia started from zero . . . I also talked [to Elliott] about the help we received from Vietnam in releasing Cambodia from the cruel regime of the Khmer Rouge.”

Elliott could not be reached by press time yesterday.

Lowell’s Khmer community makes up 12.5 per cent of its approximately 100,000 residents, according to the US census, and is the second largest in the US, behind Long Beach, California.

Namhong said in the conference that Elliott had told him that Lowell will build a four-faced Bayon statue in the city, a testimony of their solidarity with Phnom Penh.