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US urges remembrance at Cambodian killing field

CHOEUNG EK, (Cambodia): The head of a U.N. team discussing how to try former Khmer Rouge leaders visited one of Cambodia's killing fields on Sunday and said the atrocities of the 1970s should never be forgotten.

"We have come here to remember the atrocities that visited the people of this country in the 1970s," U.N. Legal Counsel Hans Corell said at Choeung Ek, a mass grave site about 15 km (10 miles) outside Phnom Penh. "This must not be forgotten."

He spoke from the steps of a memorial containing the skulls of more than 8,000 people killed by the Khmer Rouge at Choeung Ek, where he laid a wreath on behalf of the United Nations.

They represent only a fraction of the estimated 1.7 million people who died during the Khmer Rouge's catastrophic attempt to create an agrarian communist utopia from 1975 to 1979, but no leader of the group has been brought to court for the crimes.

Before touring Choeung Ek, where the ground is littered with bone fragments and victims' clothing, Corell, a U.N. under secretary general, reflected on the U.N. role in the 1970s.

"We of course all ask ourselves where we were when all this happened," he said. "The hope is that the United Nations today is different from what it was in those days."

The United Nations backed a Khmer Rouge-led guerrilla coalition for years after the group's 1979 overthrow by an invading Vietnamese army. Corell said atrocities could no longer be committed with impunity.

"It is important to note that when atrocities are committed against the population of a country, it is no longer considered the internal affairs of that country. The organisation of member states is prepared to take action."

His seven-member team's visit to Choeung Ek, a former fruit orchard where some 17,000 men, women and children were executed between 1975 and 1978, followed another round of talks with the Cambodian government on a tribunal for Khmer Rouge leaders.

"We have had a very useful discussion and very frank discussion," Corell said.

At issue is who will control a tribunal, with the United Nations maintaining the Cambodian justice system is too weak to guarantee justice on its own, while Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has pressed a majority of local judges and prosecutors.

"You always have a few questions that are difficult (and) details that you have to sort out," Corell said.

He said a resolution may have to wait until the Cambodian parliament debates a draft law on the tribunal from April 20.

"Parliament needs to debate this issue and of course the United Nations has to respect that. The debate in parliament may have to take place before we see the results of our efforts."

Corell's team is due to leave Cambodia on Wednesday. He said its talks with the government would resume on Tuesday.

Notorious Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, as government troops were closing in on his jungle hide out.

Most of his old comrades are living freely after surrendering, although both the former Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok and its chief executioner, Kang Khek Ieu, or "Duch" - the man who sent those at Choeung Ek to their deaths - are in custody charged with genocide.-Reuters