Cambodia Revolts

Cambodian resistance leaders meeting here Thursday released details of a peace plan calling for United Nations observers and peacekeeping forces to be sent to Cambodia. "We want a real peace, a just peace," Prince Norodom Ranariddh, son of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the resistance leader and former Cambodian ruler, said at a press conference called to introduce the plan.

Pol Pot, the notorious Khmer Rouge leader who presided over the deaths of more than 1 million Cambodians, was near tears as his former followers denounced him at a show trial in their jungle base camp, an American journalist said Monday. The sighting of the elusive Pol Pot was reported by Nate Thayer, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine of Hong Kong. No Western journalist is known to have seen the enigmatic leader in 18 years.

A U.S. citizen admitted in court Monday that he was the leader of a group that tried to overthrow the Cambodian government, as the trial of 32 people charged in the plot began amid heavy security. Richard Kiri Kim of Long Beach told a court that he joined the U.S.-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters in 1998 and was appointed deputy commander in chief in 2000. Two other Cambodian Americans are being tried in absentia.

Thavy Srey knew her life meant little to the soldiers arguing over her. A 17-year-old bone-thin orphan, alone in Cambodia's parched and desperate northwest after the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed in 1979, Srey was a mere piece of property to the motley bands of men with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. As the men's voices rose, her dreams of escaping evaporated. She had survived five years of U.S. bombings and then nearly four years under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

Responding to reports of the capture of Pol Pot, the man held responsible for Cambodia's genocidal "killing fields," U.N. officials began looking Monday for ways he might be brought to trial before an international court. Advisors to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan were examining at least two options for bringing the Khmer Rouge leader to trial for crimes against humanity, including having the 185-member General Assembly create a new international war crimes tribunal, sources here said.

With the television cameras rolling, Second Prime Minister Hun Sen bent his head to lay a fragrant wreath on the tiny grave of his firstborn son, who died at birth 21 years ago during the genocidal reign of the Khmer Rouge. The infant was delivered in a jungle hut outside Memot, a rubber-growing area two miles from the Vietnamese border where Hun Sen was then a Khmer Rouge cadre.

Factions loyal to prime ministers Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh battled with mortars and rocket launchers near the capital, Phnom Penh, in their second armed clash in two weeks. Rising tensions between the premiers have paralyzed the government and derailed peace talks with Khmer Rouge rebels, who reportedly have captured their longtime leader, Pol Pot. The clash began at a naval base about 20 miles north of the capital.

Accusing his ruling partner of launching an attempted coup, one of Cambodia's feuding prime ministers declared himself the country's sole leader today as their forces battled for the second straight day. Here in the capital, forces loyal to First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen exchanged heavy rocket and artillery fire at dawn after an all-night curfew. Shortly before 8 a.m.

Dawn broke over a capital city in chaos today as soldiers carrying out an apparent coup d'etat by Cambodian Second Prime Minister Hun Sen began looting parts of Phnom Penh. Army units loyal to First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who is in France attempting to organize a resistance to Hun Sen's power play, were holding out in pockets in the western portion of the city. Although no gunfire was reported as the overnight curfew ended at 6 a.m.

With Cambodia's uneasy political coalition in shambles after two days of heavy fighting in the capital, Phnom Penh, U.S. officials on Monday delayed choosing sides in the crisis in hopes of salvaging portions of the international agreement that, until now, brought a brief peace to the beleaguered Asian nation.

Thavy Srey knew her life meant little to the soldiers arguing over her. A 17-year-old bone-thin orphan, alone in Cambodia's parched and desperate northwest after the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed in 1979, Srey was a mere piece of property to the motley bands of men with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. As the men's voices rose, her dreams of escaping evaporated. She had survived five years of U.S. bombings and then nearly four years under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

A U.S. citizen admitted in court Monday that he was the leader of a group that tried to overthrow the Cambodian government, as the trial of 32 people charged in the plot began amid heavy security. Richard Kiri Kim of Long Beach told a court that he joined the U.S.-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters in 1998 and was appointed deputy commander in chief in 2000. Two other Cambodian Americans are being tried in absentia.

An international tribunal, and not a Cambodian court, should handle the prosecution of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. In an apparent attempt to win the approval for a U.N. court from Cambodia's leader, Hun Sen, he added that a Cambodian war crimes tribunal would not have to be modeled on existing ones, and other options could be explored.

Cambodia's Prince Norodom Ranariddh called Friday for international help in his country's trial of a captured Khmer Rouge army chief. A Cambodian court will try Ta Mok, despite calls for an international tribunal made by U.N. officials and human rights groups, which say local courts are too influenced by the government for a thorough trial. Prime Minister Hun Sen has ruled out an international tribunal, saying that the U.N.

The last senior leader of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla army was arrested Saturday and flown to Phnom Penh, where authorities said he will be tried for his alleged role in a regime that killed more than 1 million people. Soldiers captured Ta Mok, known as "the Butcher" for his ruthlessness, near the northern border with Thailand, senior Cambodian generals said.

The last top lieutenants of the Khmer Rouge rebel force have surrendered, ending the radical group's two-decade fight against the Cambodian government, army commanders said today. Gen. Meas Sophea, the deputy armed forces chief, said eight senior Khmer Rouge commanders agreed to give up their fight after four hours of talks on Friday at a temple in northern Cambodia near the border with Thailand. In all, about 500 fighters will surrender soon, signaling the end of the rebel force, he added.

In a low-rent office full of computers and file cabinets, a group of young volunteers is doing the job no one in this nation wanted to touch--cataloging a genocide. It is a high-risk undertaking, conducted in partnership with Yale University Law School, because there are people in Cambodia, including some senior members of government, who have a lot to lose if they are linked to the Khmer Rouge's mass killings of 1975-79.

Nearly 60 years after he ascended to the throne as a teenager, Norodom Sihanouk still holds sway over his people as a god-king, his every utterance taken as gospel, his mere presence the last proud symbol in a broken country.

Heavy fighting between Cambodian government troops and Khmer Rouge guerrillas drove tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees to the Thai border Friday. About 30,000 refugees--many of them the wives and children of Khmer Rouge rebels--were massed at the border, the Thai military said. It said the border will be opened today to allow the Cambodians access to a refugee camp several miles inside Thailand. The U.N. refugee agency will help in providing shelter for the refugees, as it has in the past.

Pro-government forces closed in on a Khmer Rouge enclave near the border with Thailand, raising anticipation that the group's former leader, Pol Pot, could be captured and tried for crimes against humanity. Pol Pot's whereabouts were unknown, but military officials said troops were drawing a noose around the last few hundred guerrillas, some of whom may be holding the ailing Pol Pot as a possible bargaining chip in a peace deal.