Word: khmers
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Heng Samrin, 45, a onetime Khmer Rouge military leader who rose to political power under Pol Pot and then defected to form the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation (KNUFNS). Entering Phnom-Penh at the head of his KNUFNS forces last week, Heng Samrin announced the formation of a ruling eight-member People's Revolutionary Council and called on beleaguered Cambodians to return to the villages from which Pol Pot had driven them. "From Mimot to Korat to Molu and Strung," the new Radio Phnom-Penh soon announced jubilantly, "thousands of buffalo carts...
...decisive onslaught against Phnom-Penh was in sharp contrast to a round of skirmishing centered in the Parrot's Beak border area a year ago. In that fighting, Vietnamese forces attempted to halt Khmer Rouge raids across the border. But the Vietnamese were battered by the tough Khmer. Vietnamese armor, which was sent to harass the Khmer, ran out of gas and had to be rescued by Vietnamese airmen flying captured American planes...
Viet Nam then changed its strategy. Hanoi decided to end the Khmer incursions once and for all when the next dry season rolled around. Green Vietnamese soldiers were replaced with seasoned troops. Dissident Khmer were welded into a fighting force that would take part in "spontaneous people's uprisings." Most-important, the operation was assigned to Army Chief of Staff General Van Tien Dung, the tactician who directed the lightning conquest of Saigon...
...much the same way, some military analysts suspect, Dung's initial advance into Cambodia last month was intended as a limited operation to secure the eastern bank of the Mekong River. But fierce fighting between September and December so decimated the 40,000 Khmer Rouge forces stationed along the border that Dung decided to repeat his 1975 triumph and launch an all-out attack. The Vietnamese, using in some cases captured U.S. equipment, were overwhelming in both numbers and skill. In a single day, aided by Soviet pontoon bridges, an entire mechanized division of 10,000 men crossed...
Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk's curious appearance at the United Nations last week, on behalf of a government that he had never liked and that had ceased to exist, can be explained simply: he hates the Vietnamese more than he hated the Khmer Rouge regime of Premier Pol Pot, which had ruled Cambodia for four years until its overthrow by Vietnamese-backed rebel forces last week. For most of that time, Sihanouk had been kept under virtual house arrest in Phnom-Penh. Two weeks ago, Pol Pot sent for the Prince and asked...