Cambodia Moves to Create Tribunal on Khmer Rouge

Without debate, Cambodia’s National Assembly on Tuesday approved guidelines to set up a tribunal made up of international and local judges to try the leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge movement.

Passage of the 48-article draft legislation is an important step toward convening such a tribunal, which the United Nations, Washington and human rights groups have long demanded, but political analysts cautioned that any trial is unlikely to be held for months and that more squabbling lies ahead.

In Washington, the Clinton administration applauded the development.

“We think this is a significant step forward, and we certainly welcome this action,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

But the U.N. said it was waiting for chief legal advisor Hans Corell to see a translation of the Cambodian legislation before deciding whether to support the court. The documents had not yet arrived at the U.N. from the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

“If the draft law is in line with the understanding we reached last year, then that’s great news,” said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq in New York. “But we need to see what the details are.”

The ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge guerrillas ruled Cambodia from 1975 until their overthrow by Vietnam in 1979. During that time, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from starvation, execution, overwork and disease.

Pol Pot, the group’s leader, died under Khmer Rouge house arrest in the Cambodian jungle in April 1998, an apparent suicide. Most of the other leaders and the rank-and-file guerrillas defected to the government between 1995 and 1998 in exchange for an informal amnesty. Their defections brought peace to Cambodia for the first time in 30 years.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has been reluctant to put the most senior leaders on trial, fearing that any attempt to negate the amnesty could lead to the Khmer Rouge re-forming and plunging the country back into civil war. He initially vetoed the idea of a tribunal but later, under intense international pressure, indicated a willingness to compromise--at least partly because Cambodia is dependent on foreign assistance.

Only two senior Khmer Rouge members are in jail: Ta Mok, 74, Pol Pot’s top lieutenant; and Kaing Khek Iev, known as Duch, who ran a prison, Tuol Sleng, from which virtually no Cambodian emerged alive. Many of the other Khmer Rouge, including former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, live quietly in the northwestern town of Pailin on the Thai border.

Last month, Hun Sen said serious unrest might break out if Ieng Sary is forced to stand trial. But he signaled his willingness to arrest two other aging leaders who defected to the government side just before the Khmer Rouge collapsed in 1998: Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea.

The U.N. and Cambodia, aided by international legal experts, have been working for months to find common ground for the framework and composition of a tribunal. The Hun Sen government initially said it would not accept foreign judges on the panel--a position the U.N. rejected because Cambodia’s legal system is generally corrupt and so primitive that many judges do not have a college education.

Under terms of the agreement released Tuesday, Cambodian judges would have a one-person majority at each level of the proposed court. But at least one international judge on the tribunal would have to side with a Cambodian judge to make any judgment binding.

Before the draft becomes law, it must be approved by the Senate, judged constitutional by the Constitutional Court and signed by King Norodom Sihanouk. The final step to convening the tribunal would be the signing of an agreement between the U.N. and the Hun Sen government.

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Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.