Cambodia's Killers Win Again.(Khmer Rouge war crimes need an accounting)(Brief Article)

Ever since the largest U.N. mission in history arrived in Cambodia in the early 1990s to supervise elections, it has been the friend that keeps on giving. The United Nations and donor nations continue to shell out millions of dollars each year to help rebuild virtually every aspect of Cambodia's decimated society. But last week the United Nations announced it was abandoning Cambodia in perhaps the country's most important rehabilitative effort of all: bringing to justice those responsible for 2 million deaths during the 1975-79 Pol Pot regime. After nearly five years of negotiations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan concluded that Cambodia was unwilling to take measures that would guarantee international standards of justice. Among other poison pills, Cambodia has insisted that a national law--which could be changed at any time-- take precedence over any agreement with the United Nations, and on provisions that could be used to protect government amnesties granted to mass murderers and to prevent defendants from choosing their own defense attorneys.

Annan is taking a lot of heat for abandoning a destitute nation. Without question, Cambodians need an accounting for their past-- desperately. But don't blame Annan, who had to protect his own institution. A courtroom farce with U.N. assistance would serve only to increase Cambodia's frustration while damaging the United Nations. Instead, put the blame where it belongs: on Cambodia's astutely manipulative leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen. Hun Sen has never wanted a fair tribunal--though he would accept a sham trial to increase international aid. The wily prime minister, who was himself a Khmer Rouge commander, fears it would destabilize his country and embarrass him. He has subtly sabotaged negotiations with transparent delaying tactics, shifting demands and public vitriol. All the while, he has used the prospect of a deal to suck more aid money from donors and to mute criticism of his strong-arm domestic political tactics. Rarely has a political leader so skillfully preyed upon the guilty conscience, ambition and ego of the foreigners who are trying to help him.

In practical terms, Hun Sen's machinations have not done his country a bit of good. Today one barely has to scratch the surface to reopen the scabs, as I learned working as a journalist there in the late 1990s. "They killed my children," a gnarled beggar woman told me on my first trip out to the countryside. As tears streaked her wrinkled face 25 years after the fact, she added bitterly, "That is why I am like this."

There is a feeling that the bad guys have won and the trauma has been left unresolved. Most of the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime live in villas, drink fine wine ...