Word: kampuchea
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...Kampuchea is quiet. Everywhere. In Kep, a small seaside resort near the Vietnamese border, the ruins of churches, schools and villas rise from encroaching jungle. The narrow road leading into the town, once a weekend retreat for Phnom Penh's well-off, is choked with underbrush. Here and there on the nearly deserted beach, small groups picnic -- families, a gathering of friends. A song of the '60s drifts from a tape recorder, bringing with it the memory of better times...
After nearly two decades of war, peace may be coming to Kampuchea at last. Officials of the Heng Samrin government met outside Jakarta last week with representatives of the three resistance groups that have been fighting the Phnom Penh regime and its Vietnamese supporters. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the former head of state who last month resigned as leader of the resistance coalition, declined to attend the talks but made plans to meet with Kampuchean Prime Minister Hun Sen in Paris in October. While the so-called cocktail party failed to produce immediate results, it was nonetheless considered a psychological breakthrough...
Whatever the shape of an eventual accord, it will take years for Kampuchea to recover from its ordeal. Provincial centers like Kampot, a river town 70 miles south of Phnom Penh, seem half empty. The government says there are 20,000 people in Kampot province, which once had a population of 420,000. It is possible to stand on a main street now and not see a soul. The reduction of urban populations by the Khmer Rouge was so thorough that towns have been largely taken over by peasants and displaced persons. They squat in empty houses or in lean...
Fear lingers everywhere. Hardly anyone is eager to talk politics, or about the dreaded Khmer Rouge, during whose five-year reign an estimated 2 million of Kampuchea's 7 million people were killed. An exception is Bour-Chinell, 64, chief of the provincial public works department in Kampot, who says, "I want national reconciliation. It's a good idea to bring Prince Sihanouk back. The old people still love him, and the young people have all heard...
Never let it be said that Prince Norodom Sihanouk is reluctant to change his $ mind. In January he suddenly resigned as leader of a guerrilla coalition that is battling Kampuchea's Vietnamese-backed government; the next month he just as abruptly resumed his post. After Viet Nam stepped up its troop withdrawal from Kampuchea, ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed to be host to peace talks in Djakarta next week between the warring sides. But then Sihanouk, who ruled Kampuchea (then called Cambodia) until 1970, quit his job again...