Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Michael Hayes, editor of the Phnom Penh Post, dubbed Secretary of State Warren Christopher's one-day visit here yesterday "Sideshow Two: The Rerun."He was alluding to the William Shawcross book "Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia," which told how, during the Vietnam War, the United States drew Cambodia out of its neutrality and into a tragic sequence of civil wars, death and destruction."You are entering a new era here, with new opportunities for greatness and democracy," Mr. Christopher told King Norodom Sihanouk last night in a meeting at the palace.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Two months after the Paris peace agreement on Cambodia, the relatively slow pace of deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops is creating a sense of instability in the country, and there are fears that this could lead to upheaval, according to Cambodian officials and Western diplomats.Although a cease-fire has been largely honored by the four factions in Cambodia's civil war, guerrilla leaders admit that their troops are increasingly hard to discipline and that banditry in the countryside has escalated sharply.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The Khmer Rouge rebels warned yesterday that internationally supervised elections scheduled to begin tomorrow would "put fuel on the flames of war" in Cambodia and accused the United States of plotting to destroy the Maoist guerrilla group.The rebels, who are threatening to sabotage the United Nations-sponsored elections with violence and who have already been blamed for the deaths of 10 U.N. peacekeepers, said the election results would serve only to give legitimacy to the current Vietnamese-installed government.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's former monarch, announced yesterday that he had formed a coalition government in which he would serve as prime minister and supreme military commander, only to abandon the plan this morning in the midst of what appears to be a long-running family psychodrama pitting the prince against one of his sons.The son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, had originally been named deputy prime minister in the newly proclaimed National Government of Cambodia.

TOKYO -- When Japan sent troops to participate in the United Nations peacekeeping operations in Cambodia last fall, the Japanese took pride in having made a major stride toward fulfilling their responsibilities as a world power.Many thought Japan no longer could be accused of ducking its duties by contributing only money, as it had during the Persian Gulf war.But since Haruyuki Takata, a 33-year-old policeman, was killed in an ambush while he was on patrol last week near the Thai-Cambodian border, Japan appears to have lost its nerve.

KOMPONG SPEU, Cambodia -- Phok Vanny found out one morning last week that land mines don't understand peace accords.A Soviet-made POMZ-2 mine, laid to protect the perimeter of a Cambodian army base camp where he was stationed, exploded when a branch fell on the tripwire, shattering his legs and spraying most of his body with fragments."

A headline about the Cambodian elections in The Sun yesterday referred to the Khmer Rouge as Communists. Though the Khmer Rouge was Marxist through the mid-1980s, the political party of which it is a part now formally espouses "democratic socialism" rather than Marxism-Leninism.The Sun regrets the error.PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's head of state, announced yesterday that he has abandoned plans to set up a coalition government that included the Khmer Rouge. He said internationally supervised elections this week proved that the Maoist rebels had no place in Cambodia's future.

Peace, if it really happens, has been a long time coming to Cambodia.For more than 20 years before the signing of a peace agreement Wednesday in Paris, that unhappy country experienced an unbroken succession of violent upheavals that killed millions, uprooted millions more, and devastated Cambodia's land and spirit.The Cambodians themselves, including the leaders of all four factions involved in the peace settlement, bear a heavy share of blame for the barbarism, death and misery their country has endured for so long.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The campaign to brin democracy to Cambodia two decades after it degenerated into genocide and Communist rule ended yesterday with political rallies, parades and occasional gunfire.On Sunday, about 4.7 million Cambodian voters will begin six days of balloting to choose leaders from among 20 new political parties. The multiparty elections are the first since 1972 and are being held under the eyes of a huge U.N. task force.But there is widespread fear that the nation's fragile new political system -- established at a cost of billions of dollars and involving 22,000 U.N. personnel and 50,000 Cambodians -- might not survive what is supposed to be a cooling-off period between now and Sunday.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The hated Khmer Rouge spend their days here in the seclusion of a heavily guarded government guest house, a stone's throw from the bridge over the Sap River that Khmer Rouge guerrillas blew up in 1973.The middle section of the bridge has never been replaced. It is a fitting symbol of the arrested state of development that has paralyzed Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 and killed more than 1 million of their countrymen.And now their leaders are back, just down the street, returning within the framework of a U.N.-brokered peace plan.