Khmer Rouge Softens Belligerent Stance : Cambodia: Khieu Samphan is back in capital. He says his group would accept advisory role in new government.

Saying the Khmer Rouge is willing to accept an advisory role in a new Cambodian government, Khieu Samphan, the nominal leader of the Maoist guerrillas, returned Tuesday to the capital, Phnom Penh, for the first time since his party was humiliated in national elections held in late May.

The French-educated economist who serves as the Khmer Rouge’s president also said the group is prepared to join a Cambodian national army. Smiling broadly, he told reporters that he has proposed the formation of a “quadri-partite army so as to avoid clashes and confrontation on the military field.”

The Khmer Rouge, with an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 fighters, is regarded as a potent military force second in strength only to the Phnom Penh regime’s army of 80,000 men. Khmer Rouge fighters are holding about 20% of the country, mostly along Cambodia’s western border with Thailand.

Soon after his arrival, Khieu Samphan met with Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who is sharing the leadership of an interim coalition government with Phnom Penh’s Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The Khmer Rouge leader quoted Ranariddh as saying that Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the country’s head of state, was prepared to offer the Khmer Rouge ministerial posts in the government even though they boycotted the election.

“If that is the case, we will accept with pleasure in the spirit of national reconciliation,” he said. “But for our part, we demand no ministerial post, only a role as adviser.”

The United States has cautioned the interim government that the inclusion of the Khmer Rouge in the government in a senior role might jeopardize U.S. financial assistance to the country. But the Clinton Administration never spelled out under what specific conditions it would withdraw the aid.

Ek Sereywath, the deputy minister of information, said that Sihanouk’s offer to include the Khmer Rouge was conditioned on the group showing its sincerity by ceasing all military activity. The rebels angered Phnom Penh by seizing a Buddhist temple at Preah Vihear on the Thai border last week.

Officials of the U.N. peacekeeping organization in Cambodia expressed hopes that the Khmer Rouge stand represents a move toward solving Cambodia’s decades-old civil war.

“We must all keep our hopes high that it is a solution,” said Behrooz Sadry, deputy U.N. special representative in Cambodia. “It’s at least the beginning of a dialogue that may lead to a final solution.”

Khieu Samphan’s return marked a remarkable turnabout in the fortunes of the Khmer Rouge, whose brutal rule in Cambodia in the late 1970s left more than 1 million people dead of starvation, illness or brutality. That bitter legacy caused an angry mob to beat and chase Khieu Samphan back into exile last November when he tried to return to Phnom Penh.

While Khieu Samphan represents the Khmer Rouge internationally, it is widely believed that Pol Pot, the mysterious figure who led the country into its brutal Communist revolution in the 1970s, still makes the important decisions from a jungle hideout near the border with Thailand.

The Khmer Rouge was widely scorned after the success of the elections, in which millions of Cambodians voted, ignoring the Khmer Rouge boycott and its threats. The vote was divided between the royalist party headed by Ranariddh, winning 58 seats in the new Parliament, and the Phnom Penh government, taking 51 seats. The remaining 11 seats were divided among smaller parties.

With the Khmer Rouge the undisputed loser of the election, it was increasingly threatened with marginalization since the formation of a relatively stable coalition government between the two main parties. It seemed increasingly likely that the Khmer Rouge struggle would be reduced to a jungle insurrection that would be hard to sustain over the long term.

Sihanouk and the royalists, who joined the Khmer Rouge to fight the Vietnamese-installed Phnom Penh regime in the 1980s, evidently are convinced that including the Khmer Rouge in some subsidiary way is more practical than having the group keep up the war.

The new government hopes to win $60 million in international aid to help pay civil servants and soldiers, many of whom have not seen any salary in months. The attraction of getting on the payroll may have influenced the Khmer Rouge.