Word: kampuchea
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...decades, Kampuchea has been torn by one of the 20th century's goriest conflicts. During its 3 1/2-year reign, the sternly Communist Khmer Rouge killed anywhere from 1 million to 2 million Kampucheans in a genocidal resettlement program. Up to another million fled, swarming into refugee camps across the border in Thailand. In 1979 invading Vietnamese troops overthrew the murderous Pol Pot. Since then, the Hanoi-backed government in Phnom Penh has been at war with a coalition of three rebel factions that includes as many as 35,000 fighters of the ousted Khmer Rouge...
...keep Hanoi from overrunning the region, want to oust the invaders, even if that means risking a return of the Khmer Rouge killers. Suddenly, however, a rare convergence of interests among all parties has made the prospect appear bright that a political settlement may finally end the fighting in Kampuchea. The new optimism has been triggered by a "peace blitz" in Asian capitals. Kampuchean President Heng Samrin began raising hopes earlier this month when he said Hanoi might be willing to withdraw its estimated 50,000 remaining troops by September...
Pushing diplomacy along, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who ruled Kampuchea from 1953 to 1970, may have dropped his demand that the Hanoi-backed regime be dismantled before a new national-unity government could be installed. As leader of the main non-Communist rebel faction, Sihanouk has a strong claim to at least a symbolic leadership post in a new government after the Vietnamese pull...
...crucial underlying impetus for a settlement, however, is the detente that began emerging last summer between China and the Soviet Union, which have been bankrolling the opposing armies in Kampuchea. "There's recognition on both sides that it's time to move their respective clients toward resolution," said a State Department analyst. A Chinese official put it more bluntly: "Viet Nam is worried about the Soviets reaching an agreement with China and being left...
...global boom in peacemaking that brightened 1988 is continuing into the new year -- and into the new American Administration. The cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war is holding, and there is progress toward an end to the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea. But in the background of all the promising jaw-jaw going on at conference tables around the world is the muted but discordant sound of the superpowers bickering over which one deserves more credit for peace breaking...