Word: sihanouk
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...March 18 five years ago, President Lon Nol led the coup in Phnom-Penh that forced neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk into exile. Last week rockets fired by the Khmer Rouge insurgents kept raining down on the besieged capital, more embassies closed, students demonstrated and a unit of loyalist troops went on strike, but somehow the government survived for another week despite a growing awareness that the U.S. Congress was not about to authorize any more military aid. Meanwhile, there were speculations that Lon Nol may be quitting as President within the next two weeks...
...notable exception is exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the titular head of the Khmer insurgents and unquestionably the most popular man in Cambodia to this day. He is "chief of state" of the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia-acronymically known in French as GRUNK-the shadow government nominally based in Peking. Most observers agree that Sihanouk has little power within the Khmer Rouge organization. If he should ever return to Cambodia as head of state, it would be as a figurehead who might serve to unite the Cambodian people around a Khmer Rouge government. Sihanouk himself has acknowledged this...
Undone by Popularity. Sihanouk's "Deputy Premier" and commander-in-chief of the Khmer Rouge fighting forces is Khieu Samphan, 43; he is the most prominent figure in the movement. Born in Cambodia's Svay Rieng province, Samphan studied from 1954-59 in France, where he earned a doctorate in economics at the University of Paris. In 1962, after Sihanouk brought him into the government as Secretary of State for Commerce, Samphan became a hero to young Cambodian intellectuals who opposed the corruption of the existing government. He drove to work on a motorbike and after long hours...
...sense, Samphan's popularity was his undoing. Sihanouk forced him to resign in 1963, charging him with incompetence. Three years later, though, Samphan was elected to the National Assembly. One April evening in 1967, during a peasant uprising in Battambang province that had set off an antileftist witch hunt in the capital. Khieu Samphan simply vanished. According to his family, he told his mother that he was going out for a breath of fresh air before dinner and never came back...
...Laotian model as a replacement for Lon Nol, but there is little reason to believe the Khmer Rouge would now accept anything less than full power. There is a chance, of course, that nationalists will temper the ardor of the Communists in the insurgent movement. Perhaps the clever Sihanouk will play a larger role than is now anticipated. The Khmer Rouge, which lacks a strong cadre of leaders, may be forced to rely upon the existing bureaucracy. Moreover, the traditional Cambodian hatred of all things Vietnamese may prove a stronger motivating power than Hanoi's ideology. But such matters...