Thai soldiers pull back from border

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Thai soldiers pulled back from a disputed stretch of the Cambodian border on Tuesday, averting a possible military confrontation near the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple, a Cambodian general on the scene said.

Bangkok denied his claim.

"They pulled out from our land," General Chea Mon told Reuters by phone from the border shortly before the expiry of a midday (6 a.m. British Time) deadline set by Phnom Penh for the withdrawal of nearly 100 Thai soldiers from the jungle-clad area.

"The situation seems to have returned to normal," he said. "Our troops are occupying the area where the Thai troops have pulled out."

However, the Thai military said it was ready for war and that no soldiers had been withdrawn.

"The Thai armed forces -- army, navy and air force -- stand ready to protect our sovereignty over the land," Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd told reporters after a meeting of top brass. "We haven't withdrawn any troops and will not."

Given the sudden spike in tension only five years after a nationalist mob torched the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh in an argument about another ancient Hindu temple, Bangkok urged Thais to "think twice" before visiting.

Before the alleged withdrawal, both Phnom Penh and Bangkok had been banging the war drums, with Thai Foreign Minister Sompong Amornvivat saying his government would not heed an ultimatum from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. "We are in our homeland. How can they expect us to leave our home?" he said in reply to a question from a reporter.

In a speech to an economic conference in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen repeated the deadline for Thai forces to pull back, but did not say what consequences would follow. On Monday, he said his forces would turn the area into a "death zone."

"We will not let the Thais stand on our land," he said, adding that Cambodian soldiers, many of them battle-hardened Khmer Rouge veterans, were shouting at the Thai lines: "If you want to die, come over here."

Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat had said Bangkok would pull back only as part of wider joint effort to agree on the various disputed parts of the border.

Singapore called for both sides to show restraint.

Tensions have been high since July, when around 1,000 soldiers on both sides faced off only yards apart in trenches dug into a hillside that until 10 years ago was under the control of remnants of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot's guerrilla army.

At the heart of the dispute is 1.8 square miles (4.6 sq km) of scrub near the temple, which the International Court of Justice awarded to Cambodia in 1962, a ruling that has rankled many in Thailand ever since.

The dispute flared in July after protesters trying to overthrow the Thai government attacked Bangkok's backing of Phnom Penh's bid to list the Hindu ruins as a World Heritage site.

(Additional reporting by Pracha Hariraksapitak and Nopporn Wong-Anan)

(Writing by Ed Cropley, Editing by Bill Tarrant)