U.N. Approves Cambodia Peacekeeping Mission

The Security Council on Friday approved the biggest and costliest U.N. peacekeeping mission ever and ordered swift deployment of a 22,000-member force to try to bring peace to Cambodia after more than 13 years of civil war.

The 15-member council unanimously directed the secretary general to begin dispatching the 15,900-member military contingent as soon as possible. The mission also will include 3,600 police monitors, 2,400 civilian administrators and others.

The mission will operate from a $200-million emergency fund until the General Assembly approves a budget, initially proposed to be $1.9 billion for 18 months. The cost is expected to be pared substantially at the insistence of Western donors.

The decision on Cambodia came one week after the council approved the dispatch of the first elements of a 14,000-strong peacekeeping force for Yugoslavia. That mission’s cost is estimated at $600 million but also is likely to be reduced.

The Cambodian force will have an array of complicated tasks: monitoring a cease-fire, disarming warring parties, helping run the country until elections by May, 1993, conducting elections, monitoring human rights, repatriating refugees and generally helping rebuild the Southeast Asian nation.

Nearly 13 years of civil war and political upheaval have devastated Cambodia. An estimated 75,000 people died in the fighting and as many as 1 million died under the radical Communist Khmer Rouge government of the late 1970s. A census in 1981 put the country’s population at 5.7 million.