CAMBODIA: GENERAL TA MOK GIVES REACTION TO DEATH OF POL POT

(17 Apr 1998) Khmer/Natsound

Khmer Rouge commander General Ta Mok on Friday gave his reaction to the death of former leader Pol Pot, saying his predecessor was as useless as manure.

The general deposed "killing fields" leader Pol Pot last year, replacing him as chief of the outlawed guerrilla group.

Pol Pot died of a heart attack on Wednesday, almost twenty three years to the day after his forces marched into Cambodia's capital and launched a horrific genocide.

The notorious commander Ta Mok, known as 'The Butcher' now leads the remnants of the Khmer Rouge army, believed to number just a few hundred soldiers.

Ta Mok toppled Pol Pot as leader of the last Khmer Rouge faction in 1997 when Pol Pot tried to stop peace talks with the government.

Ta Mok earned his nickname for his bloody purges of perceived traitors during Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979.

In death, he says his predecessor is not only powerless but useless.

SOUNDBITE: (Khmer)
"It's like this, nobody killed or poisoned Pol Pot. Now he is finished, he has no power and no rights any longer. He is nothing more than cow dung. Actually cow dung is more useful because it can be used as a fertiliser."
SUPER CAPTION: General Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge leader

Pol Pot, who once lived in this house near the Thai-Cambodian border -- was the man deemed responsible for the deaths of up to two (m) million of his countrymen.

He died of a suspected heart attack on Wednesday, but some believe there were suspicious circumstances.

Many Cambodians and members of the international community had been pressing for a war crimes trial to force him to answer for his crimes, among them President Clinton.

Such a trial could have had unpleasant side-effects for the country's current leader, Hun Sen, who was once himself a Khmer Rouge soldier.

Ta Mok lost a leg to a land mine in the early 1980s while directing guerrilla warfare against Vietnamese forces then propping up the Cambodian government.

He dismisses any rumours of foul play, saying Pol Pot's death was sudden but the result of natural causes.

SOUNDBITE: (Khmer)
"He (Pol Pot) asked my permission to move house. It was late in the evening and so I told him to wait until the next day. But nobody came to tell him he could move the next day and then he died. His wife realised he was dead around eleven o'clock at night. She tried to resuscitate him but it was no good."
SUPER CAPTION: General Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge leader

The former Khmer leader died on the eve of the anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh in April 1975.

That was followed by carnage on a scale that earned him a place with some of history's most feared tyrants.

His personal assistant says his employer's death took him completely by surprise.

SOUNDBITE: (Khmer)
"I saw him through at the window around three o'clock in the afternoon. He was fanning himself because it was so hot and that is the last time I saw him alive."
SUPER CAPTION: Mao, Pol Pot's personal assistant

Meanwhile, the dwindling Khmer Rouge forces attempt to hold their ground.

In the past few weeks, the remnants of the once-mighty guerrilla army have been
expelled from their strongholds.

Low on supplies, they've been pushed up against the Thai border by Cambodian government troops.

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