Hun Sen Courts Opponents After Coup, New Cambodia Chief Supporting Elections, Civil Rights

Cambodian leader Hun Sen on Sunday sought to soften the blow of last week’s bloody coup by calling for elections and promising civil rights, at the same time that his rival political party and the international community showed the first signs of willingness to accept him.

“We (want) to make people gain hope. Do not fear, do not run out of the country. Come back and align with the government,” he urged rival politicians in a Khmer-language radio broadcast. “As for the press, including newspapers that used to be critical, please hurry and publish.”

Hun Sen’s democratic-sounding vows were met with skepticism here by international monitors, who dismissed his words as window-dressing hiding a brutal campaign of repression.

Western diplomats confirmed Sunday that four top aides to deposed First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh have been killed in the last week. According to a government official, 400 soldiers were captured and held for “re-education,” and more than 100 provincial opposition leaders and their families were detained.

Yet Hun Sen’s message of reconciliation seemed to be getting a hearing from domestic and foreign leaders eager to salvage what was the costliest experiment in democracy in history, with more than $2 billion invested by the United Nations.

King Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s ceremonial but still influential head of state, stopped short Sunday of calling Second Prime Minister Hun Sen’s power grab - which ousted the king’s son - a coup.

In a statement from Beijing, where he is receiving medical treatment, Sihanouk said he would not sign documents endorsing the new government, but said if acting head of state Chea Sim wanted to sign the papers, he could. Significantly, the king didn’t even mention his son, who was named to the post of first prime minister when his royalist party won the popular vote in 1993.

Raoul Jennar, a scholar of Cambodia, suggested that the king, a pragmatic and longtime survivor of the upheaval of his country’s politics, was placing himself “back in the center of negotiation,” opening the door for himself to renew a power-sharing deal for the royalists with Hun Sen.