Cambodian army takes ex-rebels

Cambodian army takes ex-rebels

ANLONG VENG, Cambodia (Agencies): The largest group ever to defect from the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement was integrated into the Cambodian army yesterday in a ceremony at this former rebel headquarters near the Thailand-Cambodia border.

Government and military officials, foreign diplomats and journalists watched 3,563 guerrillas shed their olive-green Khmer Rouge fatigues for army uniforms and pledge allegiance to Phnom Penh.

The integration marked a crippling and perhaps final blow to the genocidal rebel movement which is blamed to the deaths of up to two million Cambodians through forced labor, disease, starvation and summary executions between 1975 and 1979.

Meanwhile, a special representative of the UN secretary general, Thomas Hammarberg, said at a press conference yesterday that leaders of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement could be tried by an international tribunal as early as next year for crimes against humanity. The Khmer Rouge