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