The Cambodian government gave quick approval in January to a plan to try surviving Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide, despite lingering United Nations concerns over limits on how much influence international jurists will have.

Hours before the Cabinet heeded Prime Minister Hun Sen's urgings to back the proposal, U.N. legal counsel Hans Corell told Cambodia's U.N. ambassador, Ouch Borith, in New York of "some remaining concerns.''

Hun Sen did not mention that meeting as he opened the Cabinet session, but he warned his ministers they might have to work into the night to pass the tribunal framework. Instead, they approved it before lunchtime, said government spokesman Khieu Thakiva.

The passage of the tribunal plan comes on the eve of the 21st anniversary of the Khmer Rouge's fall from power after an invasion by Vietnamese forces. After their fall, the horrors of their ultra-radical rule were uncovered.

Less than four years earlier, the Khmer Rouge had won a civil war against a U.S.-backed regime and emptied Cambodia's cities, forcing the entire population into Maoist-style farming collectives.

Starvation, disease and systematic executions cost the lives of 1.7 million people, about one Cambodian in five.

But the Khmer Rouge were not entirely defeated after the Vietnamese invasion and fought a guerrilla war against successive governments until 1996, when the leadership began breaking up. By the end of 1998, the movement was finished.

Cambodia has wooed U.N. support for a trial of surviving leaders, but has rejected calls for a U.N.-run international tribunal, arguing it would violate national sovereignty.

Cambodia's current plan calls for a handful of U.N.-selected judges to work alongside a majority of Cambodians.

The formula, which requires the agreement of at least one foreign judge to pass rulings, has received support from the United States. But some diplomats at the United Nations warn it gives Cambodian judges effective control and the power to acquit.

And despite Hun Sen's assurances that the tribunal will be independent, human rights groups worry Cambodian judges will still be subject to intense political pressure.

Cambodia's court system is notoriously corrupt and biased toward Hun Sen's ruling party, which is led by former Khmer Rouge who fled purges of the movement in the late 1970s. 

Hun Sen also negotiated the defection of several senior Khmer Rouge, currently living freely in a former stronghold, leading to the group's collapse as a fighting force.

Critics fear the defectors may escape justice if Cambodians control the tribunal.

At the moment, just two senior Khmer Rouge figures - guerrilla chief Ta Mok and Kaing Khek Iev, who headed a prison and torture centre - are in custody awaiting trial.

International pressure is nonetheless building for the United Nations - which still recognised the Khmer Rouge as part of Cambodia's government for a decade after their overthrow - to find justice for the victims and survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

The Khmer Rouge escaped trial for many years because the United States and China supported the guerrillas over Hun Sen's Vietnamese-backed government of the 1980s. Long time leader Pol Pot died on the run last year.

While trials are expected to be limited to the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge, the question of involvement by the United States, China and the United Nations in fostering the movement's survival is certain to emerge.

(Source: Associated Press)