Tired, Eyes Failing, Ready for Memoirs, Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk Declares

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who withdrew his recent resignation as head of a Cambodian coalition fighting the Vietnamese, said in a telegram received here Saturday that he suffers from fatigue and failing eyesight.

“I am very tired and unable to carry out my normal work, which consists of visiting many countries to see many governments and granting many interviews and audiences,” Sihanouk, 62, said in a telegram sent to the Associated Press from Pyongyang, North Korea.

“Also, in five or six years my eyes will be clouded by cataracts. I’ll no longer be able to read or write . . . . I want to spend these years finishing my memoirs to present my version of my country’s history,” said the telegram from Sihanouk, who was ousted as Cambodia’s head of state in 1970.

The Sihanouk-led coalition is fighting an estimated 160,000 Vietnamese occupation troops in Cambodia, which installed a regime friendly to Hanoi in 1979. Sihanouk has threatened to resign at least four times since the uneasy alliance of the Khmer Rouge and two non-communist factions headed by Sihanouk and Son Sann was formed in 1982.