Pol Pot Would Have Killed a Rebellious Sihanouk, Hun Sen Says

Pol Pot Would Have Killed a Rebellious Sihanouk, Hun Sen Says
Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
28 August 2007

Pol Pot and his cadre would have killed then-prince Norodom Sihanouk
in the 1970s had the monarch pulled his support form the Khmer Rouge
in the early days of the communist movement, Prime Minister Hun Sen
said Tuesday.

His remarks followed arguments made last week by a small US-based
advocacy group, the Cambodia Action Committee for Justice and Equity,
which said Sihanouk's constitutional immunity in a tribunal should be
stripped.

The government said in a statement Friday the former king's immunity
was not in jeopardy, and Hun Sen's remarks Monday hammered the message
home.

Citing a recorded conversation between of Pol Pot and other Khmer
Rouge cadre, Hun Sen said the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea, the
official name of the regime, discussed killing Sihanouk, the former
prince who was ousted in a US-supported coup.

From Beijing, Sihanouk had made himself the nominal head of a
coalition in exile that included the Khmer Rouge.

When he considered resigning from that post, Hun Sen said, Pol Pot and
other leaders of the movement planned to lure him back to Cambodia to
"solve" the problem "smoothly."

"Pol Pot's meaning of to 'solve it smoothly' is to kill," Hun Sen told
onlookers at a pagoda inauguration. "If [Sihanouk] rebelled, he was
finished."

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