Rival Cambodia Leaders Will Attend Peace Talks

Two key Cambodian leaders have agreed to attend delayed peace talks in Jakarta seen as the last chance to negotiate an end to the Southeast Asian nation’s 11-year war, officials said Thursday.

They said Prince Norodom Sihanouk, nominal leader of a guerrilla coalition, and Phnom Penh Premier Hun Sen had agreed separately to attend the talks.

The announcement was made just hours after Washington announced a change in policy, saying it would open direct talks with Hun Sen’s Communist government if the premier backed a U.N. peace plan and went to Jakarta.

Squabbling among warring factions over protocol had threatened to scuttle the meeting, widely seen as the last chance for Cambodians to find a political solution to the war.

“My father has saved the meeting,” Prince Norodom Ranariddh told reporters.

The attendance of Sihanouk and Hun Sen is critical to the success of the talks, the vital next step to forming an interim government of the four factions in Cambodia during a proposed U.N.-guided transition toward democracy.

Indonesian officials said they did not know when they would start the talks, which were supposed to begin late Wednesday. Hun Sen is due to arrive today and Sihanouk on Sunday.

“This is supposed to be an informal meeting of the four Cambodian factions. But behind it is the permanent five” members of the U.N. Security Council, said one non-Communist guerrilla official.

The five--the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Britain and France--have put forward a peace plan for Cambodia calling for a Supreme National Council that would hand over most of its power to the United Nations pending a free and fair election.

China supports the guerrilla coalition dominated by the Communist Khmer Rouge and the Soviet Union backs Phnom Penh.