Students, Police Clash in Cambodia : Protest: Violence is aimed at alleged government corruption. Khmer Rouge leaders delay return to capital.

Cambodian police clashed with student protesters Saturday in Phnom Penh, prompting leaders of Cambodia’s detested Khmer Rouge guerrillas to delay their return to the city and raising new questions about the future of the country’s fledgling coalition government.

The protests in the Cambodian capital marked the fourth day of increasingly violent displays of dissatisfaction with the government of Premier Hun Sen over allegations of corruption.

The violence flared Saturday when police arrested a medical student who had raised questions about earlier demonstrations, and about 200 other students marched on a central police barracks demanding his release. Police fired in the air, but at least one student was shot and critically wounded.

On Friday, a mob of angry people burned down a villa that they said had been a government-owned house sold on the private market by Minister of Transport and Communications Ros Chhun.

Hun Sen then announced that the minister and two deputies had been relieved of their posts in what the official SPK press agency described as “an attempt to quell violent protests against official corruption.”

At demonstrations earlier in the week, which were the largest public attacks against the government since the 1960s, protesters attacked the Ministry of Finance for having sold a bank to a group of Hungarian investors for personal profit.

In a similar demonstration Nov. 27, a mob attacked the headquarters of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh, and guerrilla leader Khieu Samphan narrowly escaped being lynched. He emerged with a head wound and fled to Bangkok.

The Nov. 27 demonstration was widely believed to have been organized by the government, while Saturday’s protests appeared more spontaneous, according to Western witnesses.

Khieu Samphan and Khmer Rouge defense chief Son Sen had been scheduled to return to Phnom Penh on Saturday to take part in the first meeting on Cambodian soil of Cambodia’s coalition government, the Supreme National Council. But the violence in Phnom Penh apparently prompted them to postpone their return.

The leaders of Cambodia’s four factions ended 12 years of civil war in October when they signed a comprehensive peace agreement in Paris. Last month, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, once deposed as Cambodia’s leader, returned to Phnom Penh as head of state.

But the council has failed to conduct any official business. Officials of Western governments have been pressing the council leadership to hold at least one symbolic meeting in Cambodia before going ahead with plans to spend billions of dollars supervising the peace in the country.

Under the Paris peace agreement, the United Nations will send thousands of peacekeeping troops and civilian administrators to Cambodia for about two years until free elections can be organized.

After the mob attack on Khieu Samphan, Premier Hun Sen agreed to let the Khmer Rouge live in the heavily guarded council headquarters building in Phnom Penh and to provide security for trips from the airport.

But the mounting violence in the capital appeared to show that the security situation in Cambodia is still uncertain, despite several months of unofficial cease-fire.

Hun Sen’s regime has been under mounting criticism at home for several months over the scale of corruption in his government. Most government officials in the country, which was devastated by the Khmer Rouge rule in the late 1970s, earn less than $10 a month.

Many state officials have set up private companies, while others have made vast profits by selling or renting real estate they were given as a token of their privileged positions after the Khmer Rouge was driven from power by Vietnamese troops in early 1979.

Although the regime was officially Communist until two months ago, several leading ministers moved quickly to capitalize on the newly freed market and became millionaires overnight.