![]() ![]() Even today, the Khmer Rouge remnants could hardly survive without the complicity of the Thai army across the border. ![]() ![]() The support of the US and other Western powers, including Britain, for the bogus 'coalition' set up after the Khmer Rouge defeat, with Pol Pot's defeated army as its main force, remains a huge embarrassment. This was so badly received that they then retreated to safety in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin. While Ta Mok remains in hiding, the other two surviving leaders - Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea - staged a "surrender" last month in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. The US had proposed the creation of an international tribunal by the United Nations to try Pol Pot and may still press for such a tribunal for some of Pol Pot's top aides. US officials yesterday had no comment about Pol Pot's reported suicide, but confirmed that America had been pushing for a trial for his part in the killing of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians. The offer is said to have set off "a furious behind-the-scenes effort in Washington to establish grounds for an arrest and find a country willing to hold Pol Pot while a trial could be arranged". "On March 25 the Khmer Rouge made a decision and contacted the Americans to turn him over but the Americans turned them down," Thayer said. Mr Thayer has been told by Khmer Rouge sources that three weeks before Pol Pot's death his captor, the Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok, offered to turn him over to the US. "Pol Pot died of a lethal dose of a combination of valium and chloroquin," said Nate Thayer, the only journalist to have seen Pol Pot since his regime was defeated 20 years ago. ![]()
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