Word: sihanouk
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ford knew that in foreign ministries around Asia, a triumphant and emboldened Hanoi is certain to make its influence felt most immediately. Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, figurehead ruler of the Khmer Rouge insurgents who now control his country, made that point in its most extreme form when he boasted last week: "The U.S. won't be able to hold on to Taiwan forever; the same goes for South Korea. In Thailand the people will also rise. How long will it take? Not very long." As if in reply, Ford said: "These events, tragic as they are, portend neither...
...celebration and a week of mourning for those killed in the war. But no solid clues were forthcoming about future plans or policies. About all that filtered through the curtain was a statement by Samphan in his radio address that "we will be neutral and nonaligned." Yet Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge's figurehead leader, said in Peking that within a year or two most of Southeast Asia would be Communist or proCommunist, and that one of the Khmer Rouge's first tasks must be to "remove all pro-free world elements...
...have not even been able to determine whether the movement is basically Cambodian nationalist, Cambodian Marxist or doctrinaire Communist. What is already clear, however, is that Khieu Samphan, 43, will probably wield the most power in the new regime. During the war he was Deputy Premier to Prince Norodom Sihanouk as well as Minister of Defense and commander in chief of the Khmer Rouge fighting forces. TIME'S Stephen Heder interviewed Samphan's younger brother Khieu Seng Kim in Phnom-Penh early this month and cabled this profile of the new Cambodian leader...
Three years after Samphan returned to Cambodia in 1959, Sihanouk appointed him Under Secretary of State for Commerce. Samphan's reason for accepting, according to younger brother Khieu Seng Kim: "From the Cabinet, he felt he could protect his leftist group." Samphan soon found himself courted by wealthy businessmen. The brother recalls: "One day a Sino-Khmer merchant came to our house with a package for him. It was full of money. Later at dinner, he said that 'if you take money from the capitalists, you have to work for them. Then you're a traitor...
True. In 1963, Sihanouk blamed Samphan for the rising cost of consumer goods. Samphan resigned, but remained in the National Assembly for four more years and also taught at the new Faculty of Law. As his popularity soared, he became a hero to the young intellectuals opposing the corruption of the existing government. In early 1967, Sihanouk accused Samphan and two leftist colleagues of being Communist agents and starting peasant unrest. "There are those who want me to kill these three men," the Prince declared. "But I won't do it. I'll let them kill themselves...