King Sihanouk Returns to Cambodia After Treatment : Southeast Asia: The monarch appears energetic. But fears for his health and his country’s stability persist.

King Norodom Sihanouk returned here Friday after a six-month absence for cancer treatment, with fears persisting about his health and his country’s struggle to achieve peace.

The flamboyant monarch, who has undergone chemotherapy for cancer of the prostate and bone marrow, smiled broadly and looked energetic as he emerged from a North Korean airliner that carried him home from Pyongyang for next week’s Cambodian New Year festivities.

Because of his illness, Sihanouk asked that no formal arrival ceremony be held. But he plunged into the crowd at the airport and shook hands like a seasoned politician.

Although Sihanouk made no statement on his arrival, he has made it known that he plans to remain in Cambodia for, at most, two months, during which he hopes to bring about a reconciliation between the Phnom Penh government and Khmer Rouge insurgents who are still fighting for control of the country’s western provinces.

According to the Cambodia Daily, a mimeographed newspaper published by an American with close ties to Sihanouk, the king believes that Chinese doctors have succeeded in removing most of the cancer from his body; Sihanouk has lost his fringe of white hair because of the chemotherapy. But it said he now is also suffering from arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and fears a stroke.

Alarm about the 71-year-old Sihanouk’s long-term prognosis spread here last month when the king issued intricate instructions for his funeral rites, detailing even how long his body should lie in state before being cremated.

Sihanouk was made king of Cambodia last September after the adoption of a new constitution by Parliament, elected in U.N.-supervised elections the previous May.

After the election, the government was taken over by an unusual political merger of former rivals headed by two prime ministers.

The first prime minister is Sihanouk’s son Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who headed the victorious royalist party in last May’s election; the second prime minister is Hun Sen, who headed the defeated Cambodian People’s Party.

According to diplomats in Phnom Penh, Sihanouk’s absence for medical treatment has given the fledgling government a rare opportunity to function without the king’s habitual interference. The coalition has surprised many observers by proving a durable, if not particularly effective, government.

While remaining largely above the fray, Sihanouk has intervened at times he believed needed. Once, for example, he helped save an imprisoned newspaper editor and later provided crucial support for the country’s finance minister, Sam Rainsy, who became unpopular when he raised taxes.

Despite Sihanouk’s warnings, issued from his hospital bed in Beijing, the government has mounted a dry-season offensive against Khmer Rouge bases in the west of the country, near the border with Thailand. The offensive proved a resounding success last month when government forces captured the Khmer Rouge headquarters in the gem mining town of Pailin.

Sihanouk remains eager to begin the process of reconciliation by trying to find a way to allow the Khmer Rouge to enter the government informally, since the group boycotted last year’s elections and cannot under the constitution have a formal role.

He is expected to invite Khieu Samphan, nominal leader of the Maoist group, to visit him in Phnom Penh in the next few weeks in hopes of getting talks started on a reconciliation plan.

But the Khmer Rouge leader is said to have decided against a visit soon.

The king has warned the government that it will suffer a huge loss of face if the Khmer Rouge recaptures Pailin after the start of the annual monsoon rains, when the government’s advantage in heavy vehicles and weapons is offset by poor logistics in the wet weather.