ALBRIGHT SKEPTICAL ABOUT POL POT TRIAL
Byline: Associated Press PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Cambodians saw,
for the first time Tuesday, footage of toppled Khmer Rouge chief Pol Pot, even as the United States was cautious about its authenticity.
In Singapore, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she was not yet convinced that Pol Pot, who led the murderous Khmer Rouge reign in Cambodia, was the man convicted during a jungle show trial filmed by American reporter Nate Thayer.
``I haven't seen any of the footage and I think we don't know'' if it's really Pol Pot, Albright said.
She said U.S. officials believe he should be brought before an international tribunal to face charges as a war criminal, but no progress has been made in figuring out how to do that. The United States is working with Canada and the Netherlands, which have extradition laws that could allow their governments to bring Pol Pot, linked to the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians, to trial.
TV monitors were erected by ABC News first at Phnom Penh's central market, then at the historic temple, Wat Phnom. ABC News purchased the historic footage of the trial from Thayer, a reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine who was allowed into the Khmer Rouge's northern Cambodian redoubt of Anglong Ven to witness it.
The footage showed a humiliated, broken Pol Pot being tried by his former Khmer Rouge comrades Friday and sentenced to house arrest for life.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975-79, killing scores of people by starvation, overwork and systematic execution in a quest to transform the nation into a Marxist agrarian utopia. Invading Vietnamese forces eventually ousted Pol Pot, sending him and his followers into the jungles to continue their guerrilla war.
Albright spoke about the footage while addressing Singapore leaders following three days of meetings at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.