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PHNOM PENH: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling party has lashed out at critics of the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal and voiced its support for a trial of the deadly regime's surviving leaders.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the 28th anniversary of the ouster of the Khmer Rouge regime, Chea Sim, President of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), accused critics of meddling in Cambodia's affairs.
"We wish that those entities who constantly look at the process in a negative (will) way take a more balanced view on their stands and activities," he said in a speech at the CPP headquarters in Phnom Penh.
He urged those who had voiced concern about the trial process not to "blackmail the Cambodian judiciary system, its sovereignty and national honour and distort the history to serve (their) own political agenda".
Chea Sim said his party wholly supported the process to try leaders of the communist regime, blamed for the deaths of up to two million people through overwork, execution of starvation between 1975 and 1979.
The trial process became bogged down late last year by disputes between Cambodian and foreign judges over internal rules, prompting the US-based Human Rights Watch to blame political meddling by Phnom Penh for the split.
"The CPP – who has constantly searched for justice for those (who) suffered (at the hands of) the genocidal regime – will continue to support this process on the basis of law and in context of ensuring peace, stability, territorial integrity and development," Chea Sim said.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, but several other former top regime cadres remain free in Cambodia and are expected to be called before the tribunal.
Co-prosecutors began building cases against possible defendants last year, after the government was accused of foot-dragging during almost a decade of often-stalled negotiations over how to move ahead with the tribunal.
So far only two potential defendants have been arrested for crimes committed during the regime's brutal rule.
But one, military commander Ta Mok, died in July, and there are fears that other elderly regime cadres could die before being brought to justice.
- AFP/so
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