In Cambodia, Rulers Affirm Pol Pot Capture

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — This country’s rival co-prime ministers announced Saturday that Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot had been captured in the nation’s northern jungles. They immediately vowed to put him on trial for crimes against humanity. But unconfirmed reports of his death early today left the situation murky.

Despite the confusion about the fate of a man whose reign of terror left more than 1 million Cambodians dead in the late 1970s, the joint announcement by Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen appeared to lend credence to reports that a faction of the notorious Khmer Rouge guerrillas had staged what amounted to a mutiny against Pol Pot and taken him into custody after a major split erupted this month inside his stronghold in northern Cambodia.

Hun Sen said early today that his deputy prime minister reported Pol Pot’s death, but Ranariddh maintained that he was alive and in custody.

If Pol Pot is brought in alive and made to answer for his rule of death and ruin, it would mark a turn of events without precedent in the annals of 20th century dictatorships, but one with possibly troubling consequences for this fragile country.

Never before has such a widely hated tyrant been brought to justice for crimes on the scale attributed to Pol Pot, a rap sheet that goes far beyond the mind-boggling numbers of his victims. Most died from starvation, disease and overwork as his guerrillas emptied the nation’s cities and forced people to perform hard labor in his brutal effort to remold society, eradicate individualism and create “total communism” in a single giant leap. But untold thousands were tortured and executed, often by blows to the back of the head with hoes before gaping pits in what became known as Cambodia’s “killing fields.”

Intellectuals and Buddhist monks were slaughtered, children were turned against their parents, and, eventually, the revolution began devouring its own in a climate of mounting frenzy. Schools were closed, money was abolished, religion was outlawed, and private property was forbidden, plunging the country into an abyss of destruction from which it has yet to fully emerge.

*

But while much of this legacy has been attached to Pol Pot, he was far from the only perpetrator, and resurrecting the dark history of his rule could prove uncomfortable for the many who took part in it, some of whom are in the government or are being wooed to support its brawling factions.

None of that was mentioned Saturday, however, as the leadership exulted over reports of Pol Pot’s detention.

“Hun Sen and I agree that with the capture and arrest of Pol Pot . . . this is the end of the Khmer Rouge movement, both politically and militarily,” Ranariddh said after welcoming the visiting prime minister of Thailand, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh. Standing beside the prince in a rare joint appearance by the two bitter political rivals, Hun Sen called the capture of Pol Pot “a gift of peace from Cambodia” to Southeast Asia.

Chavalit and an aide later told Thai reporters that the capture had been confirmed by a Thai military intelligence unit on the border north of the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng. Elements of the Thai military for years have maintained close contacts with the Khmer Rouge.

Ranariddh, who holds the title of first prime minister in Cambodia’s coalition government, said he and Hun Sen, the second prime minister, agreed that “Pol Pot should be brought eventually to Phnom Penh” and that the government will write the U.N. secretary-general to request establishment of “an international tribunal to try Pol Pot.”

The next step, Hun Sen added, will be to bring Anlong Veng and any remaining Khmer Rouge fighters there, believed to number about 2,000, under government control.

However, diplomatic sources said it remained unclear who is in charge of the renegade Khmer Rouge group and what its intentions are. In recent broadcasts from a clandestine radio station, the group has expressed support for the National United Front formed by Ranariddh to unify various political parties for elections next year and has strongly denounced Hun Sen as a puppet and lackey of “Communist Vietnam.”

Nor is it clear who would try Pol Pot, if he is still alive. The United Nations currently has no jurisdiction to put him on trial, and establishing a tribunal would require a Security Council resolution. That, in turn, would require the acquiescence of China, which supported the Maoist-inspired Khmer Rouge for more than two decades and might be embarrassed by a trial of Pol Pot for crimes against humanity. The Khmer Rouge chief, believed to be about 70 and ailing, was sentenced to death in absentia here years ago, but Cambodia has since abolished capital punishment.