tumnab dach, Preah Vihear province – Military officials Sunday investigated conflicting reports about the capture of Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, while government forces said they were closing in on the few remaining hard-liners in the Anlong Veng area.
“Defected soldiers are fighting Ta Mok loyalists alongside government troops aiming to capture the whole of Anlong Veng and Ta Mok himself,” said Im Heung, a leading Khmer Rouge defector and commander of troops at the front line, reportedly about 10 km east of Anlong Veng village.
But confusion reigned all day Sunday about the whereabouts of Ta Mok, who ousted rebel supremo Pol Pot last year, and the whereabouts of Pol Pot himself.
At Siem Reap Airport on Sunday morning, before boarding a helicopter taking supplies to this defector camp 55 km east of Anlong Veng, Deputy Chief of Staff Meas Sophea told reporters that he had just received news of Ta Mok’s capture in Thailand.
“Thai television broadcast last night that Ta Mok was captured by his own aides,” he said, adding that he had ordered military intelligence officers to try to confirm the reports.
Khieu Kanharith, secretary of state for Information, added fuel to the fire when he maintained Sunday that rebel defectors had captured Ta Mok on Saturday and Pol Pot on March 29.
He said he didn’t have the authority to disclose the locations of the Khmer Rouge leaders, who are charged with leading a reign of terror in the late 1970s that resulted in the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians of starvation, execution, forced labor and illness.
But he insisted that the information was credible. “I was told by the highest authorities here,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Reports of the arrests were contradicted on several fronts.
Thai television stations told The Associated Press that they had not aired the alleged broadcast about the capture of guerrilla leaders.
Chief of RCAF General Staff Ke Kim Yan said Sunday evening that he couldn’t confirm the arrests or whereabouts of Pol Pot or Ta Mok.
A Thai embassy official in Phnom Penh also said he couldn’t confirm the capture of Ta Mok and Pol Pot, and Thai military officials simply denied the report.
“There have been no arrests of any Khmer Rouge leaders in Thailand,” an embassy source told Agence France-Presse. “It looks like propaganda by the Cambodian government to show people that they can control Anlong Veng.”
The timing of Pol Pot’s capture especially seemed suspect, since Pol Pot reportedly was interviewed by a Cambodian journalist on April 2 in Anlong Veng.
In addition, Khmer Rouge radio was still broadcasting Sunday from a secret location. That is considered a sign that hard-liners are still in control, although Ta Mok’s voice had not been heard over the airwaves in the previous 48 hours, according to rebel defectors.
Khieu Kanharith said the government intends to ask a “friendly country” to help organize an international trial for Pol Pot and Ta Mok for crimes against humanity. He said the government wants to bring Ta Mok to Phnom Penh first for questioning.
Speculation about the capture of Pol Pot and Ta Mok comes two weeks after the government’s offensive against Anlong Veng, and just days after the US announced a plan to seize Pol Pot and turn him over to an international tribunal.
In Trapaing Prasat on Sunday, military commanders said the government had retaken control of Anlong Veng village, and were pushing the estimated remaining 300 Khmer Rouge hard-liners and 300 resistance fighters toward the Dangrek Mountains. The briefing was made to reporters, military attaches and defectors and their families.
“There is still a little more territory that our troops need to capture, then we will find out where those people [such as Ta Mok] are,” said co-Defense Minister Tea Banh.
According to military officials and defectors, few hard-liners remain loyal to Ta Mok.
“Ta Mok does not have a fighting force now,” said Nhem Khoeun, a recent defector. “Those remaining loyal to him are not combat forces, but administrative officials.”
A Western military analyst who attended the briefing said he was inclined to believe the report.
In Tumnab Dach camp, 8,600 civilians and 1,160 troops are sheltering after leaving their homes in Anlong Veng, said In Hoeun. The government plans to return the defectors and their families to their former homes as soon as the whole area is under government control, an RCAF official at the camp said.
Nhem Khoeun charged that resistance troops loyal to deposed first prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh had traveled from their Samlot base to bolster the hard-liners’ weakened forces.
Tea Banh stressed that it was not the government’s intention to wipe out the remnants of the rebel forces, saying he still believed negotiation could win over the remaining hard-liners.
“The principle, despite the fact that we have strong forces, is that we don’t want to use weapons, we want to talk,” Tea Banh told reporters.
(Additional reporting by Touch Rotha, Jeff Smith and Catherine Philp)
