Indonesia answered a call from Cambodia and Thailand to send observers into a disputed border area where sporadic fighting erupted in the past several weeks.
A deal to send observers was reached at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Jakarta and attended by Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya and his Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong.
ASEAN foreign ministers also urged Thailand and Cambodia to have a meeting of the Thai-Cambodian Joint Border Commission in a third country to settle the border dispute.
The monitors backed previous verbal commitments by the top military officers of both countries to avoid further fighting.
Indonesia, which holds the chair of ASEAN, also may be involved in their negotiations, although no third country has been named, an ASEAN statement said.
No date was given to send in observers.
The intervention comes after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the United Nations to send in observers and set up a buffer zone to decrease tensions in the area of less than 2 square miles.
Earlier this month around a dozen people — soldiers and civilians on both sides — died in gunfire and artillery attacks around the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple in the Dangrek Mountains 300 miles east of Bangkok on Cambodia's northern border.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that the temple was on Cambodian land but the easiest access to the mountaintop structure is on the Thai side, a route that Thai troops occasionally seal off.
Cambodia managed to get the temple listed as a World Heritage site in 2008, much to the annoyance of Bangkok.
Around 2,000 troops from both sides are stationed across on border patrol. Cross-border incidents occasionally flare up, such as in October 2008 when two Cambodian troops died and seven Thai troops were wounded in a gun battle lasting an hour.
After the first fighting this month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply concerned" about the latest skirmishes and called on both sides to "exercise maximum restraint."
At the Jakarta ASEAN meeting, relations were cool between the two foreign ministers, although the group posed holding hands for a photo opportunity.
A spokesman for Kasit said the foreign minister reiterated his call for bilateral talks within the Thailand-Cambodia Joint Boundary Commission as the best way to solve the border issue.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said but "it would be ideal if we had some commitments by the two sides that they are ready to strengthen the cease-fire by engaging third parties in some kind of capacity."
Although a third party may not be necessary if the two countries could solve the problems bilaterally, "I'm more interested in the results," Natalegawa said.
Around 40 unarmed military and civilian observers could be sent to the area. "This is an observer team, not a peacekeeping or peace enforcement team. The observer team will be unarmed," Natalegawa said.
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