UN walks out of Cambodia talks on war crimes courts
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Your support makes all the difference.The United Nations said yesterday it was ending its involvement in plans to set up a special court with Cambodia to try former Khmer Rouge leaders blamed for 1.7 million deaths in the Seventies.
Hans Corell, the chief UN legal counsel, said that the court as envisioned by Phnom Penh "would not guarantee the independence, objectivity and impartiality that a court established with the support of the United Nations must have".
Mr Corell also expressed concern that years of negotiations were delaying plans to try the former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
No Khmer Rouge leaders have appeared in court in connection with the radical group's 1975 to 1979 "killing fields", despite the millions who died from execution, starvation, overwork and disease. The former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
"The United Nations is especially concerned at the lack of urgency," Mr Corell said. "That delay extended the time before which the aged Khmer Rouge leaders could be brought to justice."
The UN decision appeared to put the responsibility squarely on Phnom Penh to hold the trials. The move ends years of negotiations and a year and a half of squabbling between the government and Mr Corell over the rules governing how the court would work.
The proposed trials of Khmer Rouge leaders is a divisive subject in Cambodia, with some fearful it will reopen old wounds and plunge the country back into civil war. The last war ended in 1998.
Hun Sen, the Cambodian Prime Minister, once a low-level Khmer Rouge commander who fled in the late 1970s, said last year that trials could begin as early as the end of this year.
He said the first to stand trial would be the military commander Ta Mok, known as "the Butcher", and Kang Khek Ieu, also known as Duch, the former chief of the S21 interrogation centre where about 16,000 prisoners were sent to their deaths. Ta Mok and Duch were arrested in 1999. (Reuters)
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