POL POT'S SECOND CHANCE?

Michael Nicholson fears the

return of the Killing Fields to Cambodia

Phnom Penh THERE IS only one cinema in Phnom Penh. It is the only one in the country. That it survived is astonishing, for such things did not fit easily into the socio- economic concept we came to know as Year Zero.

The cinema, just down from the former American Embassy, plays to full houses and people queue early for the twice daily showings, patiently waiting in heatwave and downpour beneath posters promoting Love Story. And so it is for the first hour. But then another story begins . . . the one the crowds have come to see. It is sub- titled, roughly translated, Descent to Hell. You and I would recognise it as The Killing Fields. The film, produced and financed by the Czechs, is a chilling re-tell, shot in situ, of the entry of Pol Pot's guerrillas into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, and what followed.

I ought to have been there that day to record it all, but what the Khmer Rouge did to journalists they caught was already well known long before that terrible Thurs- day. My decision had already been made for me when a local freelance cameraman came to me with a roll of 16mm film for sale. He said it showed government troops killing a captured Khmer Rouge. Then with a smile he said they cut out his heart and liver and ate them warm. I left on the next available flight for Saigon.

I flew out with a veteran cameraman who had known Cambodia from the early days of beautiful non-combatant innocence when Phnom Penh was the pearl of French Indo-China. I shan't name him but those who worked with and around him at the time will remember well enough the gung- ho American hulk from Hong Kong who carried an Arriflex camera in one hand and a ukulele in the other. As we flew out over the Mekong we could see on the islands scattered below us the bright red flags of the Khmer Rouge waiting for the signal to begin their slaughter. The cameraman turned away and uttered the epitaph of the age: 'Nick,' he said, 'the shits have won again!'

I have no urge to relive any one of those days, but it seems a great many in Phnom Penh do. This film is as horribly explicit as Puttnam's and watching it, where it hap- pened, made it infinitely more shocking, as all around me in the smelly darkness they watched Year Zero presented to them all over again in technicolour.

The Killing Fields have become some- thing of a minor industry here. Few visitors are allowed to escape them. Few wish to. Incoming journalists crave to see the open graves and the shaky pyramids of skulls and assorted bones. No television reporter would dare do his 'piece to camera' any- where else. Aid workers treat it as a pilgrimage and it is on the itinerary of the handful of tourists who pass through here and who admit it is all more fascinating than the temples of Angkor Wat.

Close to the Mekong River, these fields of sugar palm used to be a favourite Sunday picnic spot for the city-dwellers of Phnom Penh. Then there was a tea-room and a bandstand. Because of what it represented, Pol Pot purposely chose this place to slaughter those who had no place in his new society, just as he chose the Girls High School nearby as his torture prison.

The tea-room is now the site for an enormous monument, still half built, that will house the thousands of skulls presently stacked on the bandstand. Ghoulish Cambodian wags (or maybe an Italian photographer) have tied blindfolds around the eyeless heads and stuck fag-ends in between the bared teeth.

`Lest we forget' is of course the message. Now it has a certain political urgency . . . lest he return. He, of course, is a failed electrical engineer named Salot Sar, better known by the name he gave himself, Pol Pot. After the Vietnamese invasion ten years ago, the internationally generated publicity surrounding the Killing Fields served the Cambodians well. It got them sympathy and many millions of pounds from an ever generous British public, shocked by the newsfilm they saw. Since then they have hardly had a bean. Western governments, including our own, have succumbed to American pressure and South East Asian manoeuvrings and re- fused the Cambodians assistance.

To spite them and their Vietnamese protectors further, we have supported an odd coalition at the United Nations, under the impression it represents the Khmer people. Prince Norodom Sihanouk was one in that coalition. Pol Pot was another.

There is now a good chance the Prince will return to Phnom Penh this year or next. If he does not, Pol Pot will. The Vietnamese military withdrawal from Cambodia has very effectively alerted world leaders to that possibility. Hanoi's decision to cut its losses — 55,000 killed in 12 years — has increased pressure on the Prince to drop his posturing and go for a win. He will not get another chance like this.

His return will be spectacular and im- mensely popular. The only street cleaning and house painting that ever happens here quickly follows the rumour he is on his way. And he is anxious to be here, some say desperate, now that his health is failing. He yearns to die within the walls of his splendid royal palace on the banks of the Mekong. All that hinder him now are the terms of his comeback, though he and all around him are in a very negotiable mood, as is Premier Hun Sen in government here. The political banter aside, they are both intent on a conclusive and quick settlement. The alternative, as Churchill said of something else, is too awful to contemplate.

The Vietnamese withdrawal on 30 June coincided neatly with the Asean ministers meeting next door in Thailand and, more important, the attendance of the American Secretary of State, George Shultz.

Mr Shultz gave an endorsement of, indeed it seemed more like a commitment, to the peace initiative currently underway. He has in mind the informal meeting to be held in five days' time just outside Djakar- ta which will enable all those party to the conflict, and many on the periphery, to talk to each other without the constraints of diplomatic protocol. The host will be Indonesia's foreign minister, Ali Alatas, and it is being tagged the 'cocktail party'. Asean has given the idea its backing and has presented its own peace plan. This would involve an international control commission to monitor disarmament and sponsor free elections with an international Peacekeeping force as back-up. Asean countries would provide both. The plan is endorsed by Japan, got a nod and a wink from Shultz and is known to have Mos- cow's approval.

Only the capricious Prince Sihanouk continues to dance in circles in a whimsy that some interpret as political manoeuvr- ing. Having ditched Pol Pot last week, he flew to Paris to announce it, then said he would not be going to the cocktail party after all. This confused the Indonesian ambassador there who had been told the same day to order a suitably royal villa outside Djakarta for the prince's arrival.

And arrive he must, since George Shultz and Deng Xiao Ping agreed in Peking last week that any future Cambodian govern- ment must be built around the prince. The Chinese told Mr Shultz they do not want Pol Pot to have any future role in Kam- Puchean national reconciliation, and apparently said they would be prepared to keep him in China against his will. There are also reports, impossible to confirm, of course, that the Chinese have already stopped the clandestine convoy of arms and ammunition to Khmer Rouge bases.

The Vietnamese withdrawal has pro- vided the peace initiative with its momen- tum and hopefully the best guarantee of success by enabling an American of great Prominence to declare his country's new involvement in a region whose very men- tion in the past sent White House and Pentagon men running for the mouthwash. Pol Pot and his 30,000 or so Khmer Rouge guerrillas are still skulking some- where in the forests along the Thai border. We know they are actively recruiting in the refugee camps on that border, press- banging boys and girls over ten years old. We have been told by the Vietnamese and the Cambodian military that the Khmer Rouge are stockpiling supplies in a wide horseshoe north-west of Phnom Penh. We Bather from the same sources that the Khmer Rouge are already filtering back Into those provinces the Vietnamese are vacating. And we know that the interna- tional aid agencies here are currently up- dating their evacuation plans in the war

worn phrase 'to take into account all contingencies'.

The Vietnamese still have upwards of 80,000 troops here but at the rate they are leaving they could all be out by the spring. They insist they are leaving behind a trained, capable and mobile Cambodian army but it is said as much in hope as prayer. The army is almost docile, its troops largely untried and the equipment the Vietnamese are handing over danger- ously ineffective. At one tank maneouvre, three of the six tanks had to be tow-started. There are those who believe that should Pol Pot attempt a return to his Killing Fields, the Vietnamese would simply come back and rout him once again. To them the Vietnamese foreign minister Nguyen Co Thac has said this. 'The West criticised us for invading Kampuchea. Now it's up to the West to deal with the Khmer Rouge if they return.'

Michael Nicholson is senior foreign corres- pondent of ITN.