Sihanouk Greeted by Well-Rehearsed Crowd : Cambodia: The prince returns home after nearly 13 years to head a four-faction national council.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the temperamental monarch who has seen Cambodia transformed from a sleepy French colony to a land of revolution, war and nightmare, returned to his homeland Thursday for the first time in nearly 13 years to head a fragile coalition government composed of his former enemies.

In the final act of a drama worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy, the deposed prince flew to Phnom Penh on a blue and white Boeing 707 Chinese jetliner, identical to the plane that whisked him away on Jan. 6, 1979, just as invading Vietnamese troops were about to storm into the capital.

“Welcome to our prince!” shouted a well-rehearsed crowd gathered at the airport. “Welcome to the peace!”

Sihanouk and his wife, Monique, were accompanied from their exile home in China by Hun Sen, the one-eyed premier of the Vietnamese-backed Phnom Penh government and one of the principal figures of the new governing coalition known as the Supreme National Council.

Under a peace agreement signed Oct. 23 in Paris, the 69-year-old Sihanouk is returning to Cambodia as president of the four-faction national council, together with a large U.N. peacekeeping force that has a mandate to administer the country until elections are held in about 18 months.

Sihanouk, who had repeatedly expressed a desire to die in his homeland, has vowed to remain neutral in any political disputes in the new government. But with 80% of the country under its control, the Phnom Penh regime seems likely to cede little more than a symbolic role to the new government.

With thousands of schoolchildren and curious adults lining the route into the capital, Sihanouk rode into his royal palace in a 1960s-era white Chevrolet Impala convertible with red vinyl trim, the gift of an admiring Thai businessman who stages beauty pageants.

An eerie feeling of going back in time was reinforced by thousands of Sihanouk placards, copied from a 1950 photo, lining the route of his cavalcade. A band at the airport played 1960s rock ‘n’ roll and songs composed by Sihanouk, who formerly entertained guests by playing the tenor saxophone.

While the mood was festive, the crowd of well-wishers seemed notably subdued, reflecting the fact that for most Cambodians under 30, it was the first glimpse of a leader older people revere as “the god king” of their country.

At the airport, Sihanouk kissed Heng Samrin, head of state of the Phnom Penh regime, who was recently ousted from his leadership of the former Communist party, apparently a victim of his associations with Vietnam. He will be overshadowed by Sihanouk, who will become Cambodia’s leader in the eyes of the international community and much of the country.

The ever-charming Sihanouk bowed repeatedly before Buddhist monks and Cambodian dancing girls who sprinkled flower petals at his feet.

Among those on hand to greet Sihanouk were special representatives sent to set up the first U.S. and British missions to Cambodia since 1975. Also present were the commanders of French and Australian peacekeeping troops who arrived earlier in the week to help monitor the cease-fire in the long civil war.

Sihanouk, who ascended the throne of Cambodia with French help, led his country to independence from France in 1953 and abdicated to enter politics. With his country increasingly drawn into the Vietnam War by cross-border incursions by Vietnamese and American troops, Sihanouk was finally overthrown in 1970 by his defense minister, Lon Nol, in a U.S.-supported coup.

Sihanouk returned to Cambodia after Phnom Penh fell to Communist forces in 1975, and was briefly a figurehead in the new regime. But he became a virtual prisoner in his palace to the radical Khmer Rouge, whose brutal rule brought executions, starvation and disease that took the lives of more than 1 million Cambodians, including 15 of Sihanouk’s children and grandchildren.

After the Vietnamese invasion ousted the Khmer Rouge in early 1979, Sihanouk emerged as the leader of a coalition of guerrilla forces, including the Khmer Rouge and two non-communist groups, which resisted the Phnom Penh regime from bases in Thailand.

Although peace talks aimed at settling the civil war began in 1988, a breakthrough was not achieved until July. After a reported improvement in relations between China and Vietnam, which were considered the real off-stage adversaries in the Cambodian war, talks progressed quickly on a U.N. framework agreement for a new Cambodian administration.

Sihanouk once shared the world stage with figures like Yugoslavia’s Tito and China’s Mao Tse-tung, helping to form the Nonaligned Movement in the 1950s. Apart from his debatable political acumen in the 1960s, he became a comic-opera statesman who entertained lavishly, favored tailored Parisian suits and pate de foie gras to Cambodian cuisine. He fancies himself a singer as well as a composer and directed several film epics in which he was also the star.

The new government faces a range of seemingly intractable problems, including how Cambodians will respond to the return of the Khmer Rouge leaders taking part in the governing coalition. Son Sen, the Khmer Rouge military commander and a member of the new Supreme National Council, is scheduled to return Sunday in advance of the first national council meeting in Cambodia, now expected late in the month.

The Khmer Rouge will be allowed only 10 bodyguards to protect each leader in the new government, according to a press briefing by Sin Son, a deputy interior minister.

The guerrilla group reportedly has 40,000 disciplined fighters hidden in Cambodia’s remote jungles but under the peace agreement will be required to demobilize 70% of its forces under U.N. supervision.

In addition to his former enemies in the Hun Sen regime and the Khmer Rouge, the Supreme National Council includes officials of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, a U.S.-funded group that includes many former officers of the Lon Nol regime that ousted Sihanouk in 1970, as well as a faction headed by Sihanouk’s son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.

The country of 8.5 million people to which Sihanouk has returned has been ravaged by more than two decades of war and has turned into one of the world’s most impoverished nations.

Recent free-market economic changes have produced a boom in Phnom Penh, with new homes under construction and cars and motorbikes jamming the once-deserted streets.

Western economists have expressed fears that the backward country will be propelled into a spiral of high inflation by the arrival of thousands of peacekeeping troops and international aid groups. The country has no infrastructure, with most roads washed away and only a few hundred telephones.

Cambodia’s Chinese businessmen, who have reportedly produced more than 100 millionaires from their ranks in the last few months, staged a traditional lion dance for Sihanouk as his motorcade slipped by Thursday.