Cambodia’s Four Factions Can’t Agree on Anything : Asia: The breakdown is a blow to hopes for peace. No date is set to resume the talks.

The first meeting of a council representing Cambodia’s four warring factions collapsed in acrimony Wednesday, dealing a severe blow to hopes for a speedy transition to peace.

The meeting ended after three days in Thailand, the only place that the four adversaries would agree to sit down together. Although the breakdown was described as a temporary adjournment, no date was given for a resumption.

“We have not been able to reach any agreement at all,” Premier Hun Sen said before leaving for Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

At a meeting Sept. 10 in Jakarta, Indonesia, the four factions agreed to put aside their differences and form a Supreme National Council to serve as Cambodia’s executive authority for a transitional period during which the United Nations would assume many of the functions of government.

The agreement called for a 12-member council composed of six representatives from the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh and six members representing the three resistance factions that have waged war against the government since 1979, when a Vietnamese invasion drove out the brutal Khmer Rouge and installed a pro-Hanoi government. The factions are the Communist Khmer Rouge, plus two others led by exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Son Sann, a former prime minister.

The talks broke down over a vague provision of the Jakarta agreement that provides for a chairman who would be the council’s 13th member. The agreement left this to be decided later.

At the Bangkok talks, the resistance coalition insisted that Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the deposed ruler of Cambodia, be appointed as chairman. The Phnom Penh government, seeking to maintain numerical balance on the council, insisted that Sihanouk also be one of the 12 council members, or that the Phnom Penh government be given an additional vote as a counterbalance.

A diplomat commented that squabbles are to be expected when such bitter enemies sit down together for the first time. More than 1 million people have died in Cambodia since 1975.

The immediate problem raised by the collapse of the talks is that the Cambodians now have no delegation to send to the United Nations later this month to take Cambodia’s seat in the General Assembly. The seat is now held by the resistance coalition, but the United States has said it will no longer support this situation.

After taking over the U.N. seat, the Supreme National Council was supposed to enter into negotiations with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China--on implementing their plan for bringing peace to Cambodia.

The plan calls for U.N. officials to take over the administration of Cambodia, supervise a cease-fire and organize free elections.

Despite agreement to accept the U.N. plan in its entirety, logistic questions and matters of protocol bedeviled the first session.

The meeting opened at the Cambodian Embassy in Bangkok, technically Cambodian territory. The participants were so wrapped up in the arrangements that their Thai hosts finally agreed to drive all four factions into the embassy in a giant red bus so that none could claim to have arrived first.