Former Khmer Rouge deputy prime minister Ieng Sary’s quasi-political movement on Sunday lauded last week’s summit agreements, calling them “a light of hope to lighten and guide us all.”
The Pailin-based Democratic National Union Movement appealed to “winning political parties” to cooperate in working out the details of the agreements.
“DNUM warmly welcomes and wholeheartedly supports this agreement, and is determined to do the best it can to make the spirit and the significance of the agreement conducive to success,” a group statement said.
The agreement included amnesties for resistance generals Nhiek Bun Chay and Serey Kosal.
The DNUM statement also called on the international community to provide aid to Cambodia and said the summit’s agreements will contribute to “the growth of democracy and upgrading of human rights.”
Ieng Sary is a likely target of a UN and Cambodian government initiative to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea regime on charges of crimes against humanity.
The 1975-78 regime is held responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from execution, starvation, forced labor and disease.
King Sihanouk gave Ieng Sary a royal amnesty in 1996, releasing him from a death sentence handed down in absentia by a Cambodian court in 1979.
In the 1980s, Ieng Sary and the Khmer Rouge fought against the People’s Republic of Kampuchea government, a single-party communist government run by the CPP’s forerunner.
