United Nations Cambodia

The United Nations unexpectedly announced Friday that it is ending its long quest to try former leaders of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime on charges of genocide, blaming the decision on Cambodia's refusal to permit prosecutions under international rather than its own laws. The move was immediately criticized by the United States, which strongly backed the 4 1/2-year effort to set up a special tribunal. It urged the U.N. to resume talks with Cambodian officials.

The United Nations unexpectedly announced Friday that it is ending its long quest to try former leaders of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime on charges of genocide, blaming the decision on Cambodia's refusal to permit prosecutions under international rather than its own laws. The move was immediately criticized by the United States, which strongly backed the 4 1/2-year effort to set up a special tribunal. It urged the U.N. to resume talks with Cambodian officials.

The muffled thud of artillery shells shatters the afternoon tranquillity in this northern Cambodian town, fresh evidence that a cease-fire in Cambodia's civil war is still an elusive goal a week after the United Nations began a major deployment in the country. Four people were wounded when the shells fell close to Kompong Thom, 125 miles north of Phnom Penh, on Friday night. It was the closest the fighting has come to this northern provincial capital in nearly two years.

Without debate, Cambodia's National Assembly on Tuesday approved guidelines to set up a tribunal made up of international and local judges to try the leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge movement. Passage of the 48-article draft legislation is an important step toward convening such a tribunal, which the United Nations, Washington and human rights groups have long demanded, but political analysts cautioned that any trial is unlikely to be held for months and that more squabbling lies ahead.

Representatives of 19 nations, including the United States, signed an international peace agreement on Wednesday, ending 21 years of conflict in Cambodia and placing the Southeast Asian country under U.N. administration until general elections can be held in 1993. The assignment, with a cost estimated at $2 billion, is the biggest, most expensive ever for the United Nations. Under the agreement, U.N.

On a hot and steamy night last November, as the muffled booms of artillery shells echoed in the distance, the pressures of life in this refugee camp turned one man into a monster. Angered that his wife and 6-year-old daughter had gone for an evening walk against his wishes, Touch Chamleakana began drinking heavily. When they returned, he savagely attacked them with an ax. Both died instantly.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said violence will not scare U.N. peacekeepers away from fulfilling their mission to bring peace to Cambodia. He spoke to the staff of the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia shortly after a Japanese U.N. election official was assassinated in central Kompong Thom province in the sixth killing of a peacekeeper in two weeks. Initial U.N. military reports blamed the killing of Atsuhito Nakata, 25, and his Cambodian interpreter on the Khmer Rouge.

Without debate, Cambodia's National Assembly on Tuesday approved guidelines to set up a tribunal made up of international and local judges to try the leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge movement. Passage of the 48-article draft legislation is an important step toward convening such a tribunal, which the United Nations, Washington and human rights groups have long demanded, but political analysts cautioned that any trial is unlikely to be held for months and that more squabbling lies ahead.

De factor leader Hun Sen threatened to suspend cooperation with the United Nations because the organization left his country's seat vacant at the upcoming General Assembly session. Hun Sen, who ousted his co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, in a July coup, said the letter presenting his government's credentials for the U.N. seat was signed by King Norodom Sihanouk and that the U.N.

The head of the U.N. mission here accused the Khmer Rouge guerrillas Wednesday of undermining Cambodia's peace accord and warned that widespread fighting could erupt again. Yasushi Akashi, who leads the biggest U.N. peacekeeping operation, condemned the radical Marxist group for refusing to disarm as required by the peace treaty signed by Cambodia's four warring factions last October. He said the Khmer Rouge also is barring U.N. troops from territory it controls.

Fifty opposition figures have been killed in Cambodia since August, more than doubling the previously known toll of political slayings following a mid-1997 coup, the United Nations said. Thomas Hammarberg, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative for human rights in Cambodia, announced the new evidence on the killings at a Geneva news conference. Information about the killings, some as recent as March and coming on top of a previously documented 41 executions blamed by U.N.

Nearly five months after Cambodia lost the democracy that the international community had bought for this hapless land, Prime Minister Hun Sen's campaign to gain legitimacy for his regime is hitting a stone wall. The United Nations has kept Cambodia's seat vacant. The United States and most donors have suspended non-humanitarian aid. The World Bank won't even talk about new projects. Even the nonconfrontational Assn.

De factor leader Hun Sen threatened to suspend cooperation with the United Nations because the organization left his country's seat vacant at the upcoming General Assembly session. Hun Sen, who ousted his co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, in a July coup, said the letter presenting his government's credentials for the U.N. seat was signed by King Norodom Sihanouk and that the U.N.

In an emotional appearance here Thursday, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who was deposed as Cambodia's first prime minister last weekend by his political rival and coalition partner, Hun Sen, appealed to the world community to economically isolate the new regime. Ranariddh said he favored using diplomatic and economic pressure to force Hun Sen to restore the government elected in 1993, but pointedly left open the possibility of a return to civil war if that does not work.

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.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk said on Saturday that he was severing relations with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Cambodia because of reports that it did not want him to become the country's king. In a letter to the U.N. mission chief, Yasushi Akashi, Sihanouk revoked an invitation for Akashi to meet with him in China this week. But the mercurial prince also announced on Saturday in Beijing, where he is now staying, that he does not want to be king.

A meeting of Cambodia's reconciliation council, the body that is supposed to help the United Nations steer the country to a durable peace, foundered Saturday after three of its members failed to attend. "It was awful, tedious," said one independent observer at the meeting who did not want to be identified. "It just went round in circles. There was no agreed agenda. It was quite unstructured. "It was not acrimonious, they just did not make a great deal of headway.

The Phnom Penh government called Tuesday for a U.N.-brokered disarmament plan in Cambodia to be scrapped so its soldiers can go back in the field to counter attacks by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. "We want the U.N. to declare an official end to Phase 2 of the cease-fire," government spokesman Khieu Khanarith said. "We want troops that have been cantoned to go back to their positions." The second phase of the accord signed last year requires fighters from the four Cambodian factions to enter U.N.

The Security Council decided Friday that the withdrawal of the military component of the U.N. operation in Cambodia, one of the biggest and costliest in U.N. history, should be completed by Nov. 15. In a unanimous resolution, it also confirmed that the functions of the U.N.

The United Nations began the scheduled withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from Cambodia on Monday, but conflicts persisted between the government and the Communist Khmer Rouge faction. A contingent of 849 soldiers from Tunisia left for Thailand en route home. The remainder of the 20,000-man U.N. military force is scheduled to leave by Nov. 15. The force's mission was to monitor a cease-fire by Cambodia's four factions and assist in organizing democratic elections held in May.