[news] Pol Pot surrendered - Khmer Rouge radio

[Dam Son <son@u.washington.edu>]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuter) - Pol Pot, the fugitive leader held
responsible for the deaths of more than one million Cambodians, was
reported Wednesday to have surrendered to former comrades. 

Khmer Rouge radio, under the control of a rival rebel faction which has
broken with the leader of the 1975-79 "killing fields" regime, said he had
turned himself in to "confess."

But the report could not be independently confirmed and was met with
scepticism by Co-Premier Hun Sen. 

"`Pol Pot came to confess on June 18," the radio said in a broadcast
monitored in Phnom Penh. It did not give any details of what the
confession contained. 

"The darkness of the brutal regime of Pol Pot which hung over Cambodia
since 1975 ... now the Cambodian people have destroyed it completely," the
radio said. "The new regime has started," it said. 

Phnom Penh has pardoned former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary for
his role in the genocidal rule but stressed there can be no reconciliation
with Pol Pot, whom King Norodom Sihanouk has called one of "the biggest
criminals in the history of Cambodia."