1.
GV Soldiers in formation (recruits)
0.05

2.
SV & SCU Military band plays (2 shots)
0.11

3.
SV PAN Minister of Defence inspects troops
0.22

4.
GV & SVs Troops and bend past monks spraying them with holy water (4 shots)
0.50

5.
SV PAN FROM Villagers to troops marching to trucks
0.54

6.
SV Troops climb onto trucks
0.58

7.
CU Weeping woman
1.02

8.
SV & CU Soldier kissing baby goodbye (4 shots)
1.15

9.
GV & SVs Trucks along street (4 shots)
1.36



Initials BB/2212 BL/TB/BB/2230



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: The government of the Khmer Republic has intensified its recruiting drive for soldiers in its effort to expel communist insurgents.

All men between the ages of 18 and 25 have been ordered to report for a "Certain period" of military service in the second major conscription drive this year. And those who refuse to obey the order are being picked up off the streets and taken to conscription offices.

Earlier this month the Khmer Government announced it needed another 25,000 men to bolster its army, which has been drained by three and a half years of war. If the number was not reached, another call would be made for men over the age of twenty five.

The conscription drive was announced as communist-led forces put further pressure on defences south of the capital, Phnom Penh. The communists were also keeping government troops occupied on the northeast and northwest sectors of the capital's outer defence circle.

The Khmer government hopes to drive the communists back from the provincial Highway 38 skirting the capital's southern defences, before the positions become bases for a large-scale assault in the coming dry season.

On Sunday, (October 14) some five hundred recruits entered army training centres in Phnom Penh. The recruits were inspected by the Khmer Minister of Defence, Major General Thappana Nginn, and blessed by Buddhist monks before entering the training camps.