Cambodia Rivals Agree to Interim Peace Plan

Cambodia’s warring factions agreed today to share power in a transitional ruling council and endorsed a U.N. peace plan aimed at ending the country’s 11-year-old civil war.

Although resistance leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk unexpectedly announced that he is taking a six-month leave of absence for reasons of health, his three-party guerrilla resistance coalition and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen unanimously supported the formation of a 12-seat Supreme National Council.

A joint statement issued at the end of two days of negotiations in the Indonesian capital identified six members of Hun Sen’s government as members of the council. The remaining six seats will come from the guerrilla resistance coalition, with each faction allowed two members.

The parties also agreed that a peace plan recently adopted by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council would serve “in its entirety as the basis for settling the Cambodian conflict.”

The warring factions met today to discuss who will rule their country until elections can be held. A day earlier, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas had said the four factions had indicated that they could accept the U.N. peace plan as a negotiating framework.

The plan was drawn up by the permanent members of the Security Council--the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain. Negotiations are now aimed at forming an interim administration, Alatas said.

The talks have been a series of meetings among the factions and mediators Alatas and Edwige Avice, the French deputy foreign minister.

The Vietnam-installed Phnom Penh government was represented by Hun Sen. For the three rebel factions, Khieu Samphan represented the Communist Khmer Rouge, former Prime Minister Son Sann the anti-Communist Khmer People’s National Liberation Front and Prince Norodom Ranariddh the followers of his father.