U.S. to Insist on U.N.-Backed Vote in Cambodia : Asia: Baker says a new government should be chosen in open elections. Beijing and Hanoi reportedly are working together to install a new regime.

Amid reports that Vietnam and China are now quietly working together to install a new regime in Cambodia, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Wednesday that the United States will insist on U.N.-sponsored elections to choose a new government in Phnom Penh.

“We, the United States, are not interested in any shortcuts that would result in a partial settlement (of Cambodia’s civil war),” Baker told officials of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) here. He said the Cambodian people should have the opportunity “to choose their own government by means of free and fair elections under U.N. supervision.”

State Department officials announced that the United States is launching a new round of diplomatic contacts with Vietnam over the next 10 days in an apparent effort to avoid being left on the sidelines while Cambodia’s future is worked out by other countries.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kenneth Quinn is being dispatched to Hanoi this week to talk about U.S. servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam War--including a widely publicized photograph that purportedly shows three Americans who are still alive.

Next week, Assistant Secretary of State Richard H. Solomon will meet in Bangkok, Thailand, with Vietnamese Vice Foreign Minister Le Mai to talk about the current chances for improving relations between the two countries.

“We have expressed an interest in moving toward normalization (of ties between the United States and Vietnam),” Baker said at a press conference here Wednesday.

However, he added, the United States is still waiting for cooperation from Vietnam on a Cambodian settlement and for further help on missing American servicemen.

By insisting on elections in Cambodia, Baker was attempting to head off any power-sharing deal--such as, for example, one in which the current, Vietnam-backed government in Phnom Penh might work together with the Khmer Rouge, the insurgents who have been armed and supplied by China.

Until recently, Vietnam and China were considered bitter contestants for power in Southeast Asia, and Cambodia was thought to be the main battleground for their rivalry.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia at the end of 1978, dislodging the Khmer Rouge, the fanatical, pro-Chinese Communist faction that had ruled since the end of the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge was blamed for the deaths of more than 1 million Cambodians during its 3 1/2-year rule.

The Vietnamese installed a new government made up largely of former members of the Khmer Rouge. That government, headed by Premier Hun Sen, has remained in power since the Vietnamese troop withdrawal in 1989.

Since the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989 and the collapse of Eastern Europe’s Communist governments later that year, there have been efforts by Vietnam and China to patch up geopolitical differences and work together to preserve the cause of Marxism-Leninism in Asia.

U.S. officials have said they believe that China and Vietnam began to talk about cooperating on Cambodia at a meeting last September in the Chinese city of Chengdu. The effort later bogged down because of internal disputes in the Vietnamese leadership. But several weeks ago, after a Communist Party congress, Vietnam’s leaders declared that improving relations with China was their top foreign-policy priority.

That has raised once again the specter of a “Red solution” to Cambodia’s civil war--one in which two competing Communist Party factions, the Hun Sen government and the Khmer Rouge, agree to share power, freezing out the non-Communist groups.

For more than a decade, the United States has supported and helped finance two non-Communist resistance groups in Cambodia, one headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, a former ruler. Sihanouk lives in Beijing and in Pyongyang, North Korea, and for years cooperated in a political alliance with the Khmer Rouge.

Last week, at a meeting in Beijing, both the Phnom Penh government and the Khmer Rouge announced that they would accept Sihanouk as the nation’s leader. At the same time, the prince stepped down as head of his own non-Communist faction, thus setting the stage for a possible “Red solution” in which the non-Communist groups are left out.

This “Red solution” is not the only power-sharing proposal for Cambodia that the Bush Administration is trying to block. U.S. officials are also worried about another separate effort, spearheaded by France, to work out a power-sharing arrangement between the Hun Sen government and Sihanouk.

This “French solution” would leave the Khmer Rouge out of power. Officials of both the Reagan and Bush administrations have long said they fear that the Khmer Rouge might be strong enough to return to the battlefield and conquer Phnom Penh once again.