Any help coming from India would be welcome: Norodom Sihanouk

He is the nearest thing to a world-class statesman that Kampuchea - a nation that is a poignant testament to the corruption of geopolitics - has produced in modern times. He is far and away the most distinguished and esteemed of Kampuchean leaders living in exile. Volatile and protean, this hereditary leader of the Kampucheans, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, 59, wanders from Beijing to Pyongyang to Paris without a tangible strategy, but still personifying his savaged land to the rest of the world, us he has done for more than 30 years.

Over the years, this former king of Kampuchea has travelled a strife-torn path. Known in the '50s as a playboy, Sihanouk dabbled in songs, music, writing, film-making - and women. He was the "god prince"; he was sacred and so was everything he touched. However, his fairy-tale world ended in 1970 when he was deposed by the American-backed forces of Marshal Lon Nol. The prince went into exile, only to return in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge - the ultra-communist movement of Pol Pot - grabbed power. Sihanouk served briefly as a figurehead ruler, only to be put under virtual house arrest. Only in 1979, when Vietnamese troops overthrew Pol Pot and his brutal regime, was Sihanouk freed.

Compared to the barbarity, and often sadistic rule of Pol Pot, the people of Kampuchea seemed to be better off for their imposed liberation even though their homeland was under virtual Vietnamese occupation. As Sihanouk asks in the following interview: "Is that enough reason to condone the continuing presence of occupying forces?" Several Kampuchean exiles in Paris who spoke to INDIA today point out that the Vietnamese are not popular in Kampuchea. Centuries of racial and territorial rivalries between the Vietnamese and the Kampucheans have not been forgotten.

Although Prince Sihanouk, the wily, quintessential survivor, commands a weak guerrilla force, he enjoys wide popularity with the Kampuchean peasantry. However, Kampuchean intellectuals despise him, the Chinese and the Vietnamese distrust him and the Thais are not enamoured of him.

Acknowledged as a shrewd and astute politician, the prince is a rootless exile today, trying to forge an alliance with the very same people he maintains were "torturers and assassins of their own people", in the hope that they can force the Vietnamese to quit some day and that the Kampuchean people may welcome him back. In this exclusive interview toIndia Today's Paris Correspondent, Ramesh Chandran, the prince reveals why he is known the world over for his candour and assertiveness. Excerpts:

Q. Would you say that India's recognition last year of the Heng Samrin regime indicates that it is pro-Soviet and pro-Vietnam and consequently not truly non-aligned?
A.According to me India will show real non-alignment by clearly proclaiming that the Kampuchean people have no national Government worth its name. Because on one side, the Khmer Rouge regime, torturers and assassins of their own people, are beyond the law and the regime of Heng Samrin/Chan Si is a valet of the USSR and a slave of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. If India does so, she would have proved to be genuinely non-aligned towards the Kampuchean problem and the Kampuchean people will consider themselves to be real blood and spiritual brothers of the Indian people.

Q. But morally, can a state or an individual he justified in making a gesture of support to Pol Pot - whose regime, with a grisly record of having massacred well over a million Kampucheans, is considered one of the bloodiest in history?
A. India is absolutely right in condemning the abominable and arch-criminal regime of Pol Pot. But no country should use this condemnation as a pretext to endorse the inadmissible colonisation of the country by the Vietnamese and the USSR. By refusing to give to the Kampucheans their sovereignty and right to self-determination, Vietnam has shown to the world its armed intervention in Kampuchea was not aimed to save the Khmer people from Pol Pot's genocide. The general election in Kampuchea, conducted by the valet of the Vietnamese in Phnom-Penh, was absolutely anti-democratic because it did not let the opposition participate.

Q. What role do you think India can play, specifically, in ending the current stalemate in Kampuchea?
A. If she withdraws recognition of the Heng Samrin/Chan Si regime. India can play a big role in this search for just and peaceful solution to the Kampuchean problem. Along with France and other neutral countries, India will be able to serve as a bridge between two antagonist camps to bring about a rapprochement. India is in a position to play a prominent role just as she did in 1954.

India can play a big role in this search for a just and peaceful solution to the Kampuchean problem....India will be able to serve as a bridge between two antagonist camps to bring about a rapprochement.