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PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's powerful ruling party on Monday warned against politicising the country's genocide trials, while voicing its support for prosecuting leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the 29th anniversary of the ouster of the Khmer Rouge, Chea Sim, president of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), said he believed the trials had international backing.
But he also lashed out at "absent-minded elements" and "ill-willed political circles" who oppose efforts by Cambodia to reconcile after years of civil strife, which include trying those behind the Khmer Rouge killing fields.
"We condemn any acts to use the courts with the aim of creating instability or disrupting society," he said.
The five top surviving leaders of the regime, blamed for the deaths of up to two million people through overwork, execution or starvation between 1975 and 1979, were arrested last year by Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal.
The first public trials are expected to be held this year, but the tribunal has been plagued over the last decade by delays amid concerns over political interference.
Rights groups and some opposition politicians have accused the government of trying to derail the trials for fear of exposing atrocities committed by former regime cadres currently serving in Prime Minister Hun Sen's administration.
Hun Sen himself was a former Khmer Rouge military commander who later fled to Vietnam and returned as part of a Hanoi-backed military force that helped overthrow the regime in January 1979.
- AFP/so
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