Global Policy Forum

By Steven Erlanger

The Clinton Administration stepped up its efforts today to bring Khmer Rouge officials to trial, commissioning experts to prepare indictments for gross human rights abuses, senior American officials said.

To increase the chances that they will be brought before an international tribunal, the United States officially asked Cambodia not to offer amnesty to any more senior Khmer Rouge officials.

While there are several ways to set up a tribunal for the 10 or so most responsible Khmer Rouge figures who remain alive, the officials said, all of them present difficulties.

American officials said they were looking hard at several options since the death of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge founder, on Wednesday. The easiest might be to have the United Nations Security Council expand the jurisdiction of the war-crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, now convened in The Hague. But China, once the dominant ally of the Khmer Rouge, continues to resist this.

Other options would be to try to find a third country with ''universal jurisdiction,'' whose laws allow such a trial on its territory, or hold the trial in Cambodia with an international tribunal.

Thomas R. Pickering, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, raised the issue of expanding The Hague tribunal when he visited Beijing this week. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright will go there in 10 days to help prepare for President Clinton's visit in late June, and American officials said they believed that this would give Washington some leverage on the issue.

''Given the enormity of the crimes committed, it's hard to imagine any Government rejecting a proposal to establish such a tribunal,'' said a senior Administration official.

Hard, but not impossible, suggested Diane Orentlicher, professor of law and director of the War Crimes Research Office at the American University Law School here. ''For more than two decades, there has been a politics of expediency and a policy of indifference,'' she said.

''There are different ways for the international community to do this, but the open question is whether there is the will to do it on the part of the states that can do it.''

American officials said that several key countries had not yet accepted the idea of turning the issue over to a tribunal, and that the actual capture of leading Khmer Rouge figures -- the most prominent of whom are all near the Thai border and are feuding among themselves -- will concentrate the minds of relevant governments.

Those countries with universal jurisdiction include Germany, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain, most of which established such laws to prosecute aging World War II war criminals, Professor Orentlicher said. And some countries have already used such laws against those responsible for genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia.

As for a tribunal in Cambodia, Professor Orentlicher said that last June, when it first appeared that Pol Pot might be available for trial, the two Cambodian co-Prime Ministers asked the United Nations to set up an international tribunal, but said Cambodia itself could not support one.

At that moment, the Administration made its first contingency plan to arrest and try Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge figures, organizing military flights and negotiating with Canada and the Netherlands to hold the Cambodians in advance of a trial.

A coup in Cambodia took place two weeks later, so little happened. ''But the consent is there,'' Ms. Orentlicher said, adding, ''You could have a coalition of willing states, including Cambodia, concluding a treaty, like at Nuremberg,'' where the Nazis were tried. Then, the four victorious Allied powers established the tribunal, but 19 other nations backed it.

In the meantime, United Nations officials have named a three-person team to investigate the remaining leaders, appointing Rajsoomer Lallah, the former Chief Justice of Mauritius, as team leader, said the United Nations special representative for human rights in Cambodia, Thomas Hammarberg.

The death of Pol Pot has only increased the momentum for a trial, the officials said.

The other Khmer Rouge leaders had been trying to bargain with Pol Pot in an effort to get the same deal for amnesty provided to the former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, Ieng Sary, who broke away from the Khmer Rouge in August 1996 and currently governs a Cambodian region near Pailin.

American officials do not want the Cambodian Government of Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge commander who defected in the late 1970's, to cut any more deals like the one with Mr. Ieng Sary, which Washington had also opposed.

And by pressing so publicly for trial of the remaining top leaders, the Americans are trying to encourage Khmer Rouge rank and file to turn them in, or to defect themselves, further hastening the destruction of the movement.

Ms. Albright is described as particularly interested in pursuing Cambodian war criminals, and named David Scheffer, who has urged the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders since the early 1980's, as her ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues.

Ben Kiernan, the director of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University, said: ''The death of Pol Pot is one event in the context of the dwindling and disintegration of the Khmer Rouge. They are losing control, so they could be captured. While they still remain in control of armed units and are trying to affect Cambodian political life, they are weaker now than at any time in the last 30 years.''

If the search for Pol Pot led to his death, Mr. Kiernan said, ''it means that the search is closing in, and that it's now possible to arrest the other senior members of the regime who presided over the genocide with Pol Pot, and who if they are not equally responsible, are nearly so.''

Still at large are leaders who were the President, Deputy Prime Minister, military commander, deputy military commander and deputy chief of the Khmer Rouge regime and party.

There are a number of figures being sought.

Nuon Chea, 71, was second in command to Pol Pot until they fell out in October 1996. He was responsible for party organization and ideology.

According to the Cambodia scholar Stephen Heder, of London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, he was Pol Pot's alter ego. ''There is nothing to suggest the least bit of daylight between the two,'' Mr. Heder said, ''and there are more documents in the archives that implicate him in crimes than implicate Pol Pot.''

Mr. Nuon Chea is near the Thai border with Ta Mok, the military commander known as the Butcher, and Khieu Samphan, who was the public face of the Khmer Rouge.

Ta Mok, who ran important zones of the country for the Khmer Rouge Government, was responsible for killing Cambodians who had worked with the old Lon Nol Government, the middle class and intellectuals who had been declared class enemies. His targets included Communists whom Pol Pot feared were his enemies. Ta Mok turned against Pol Pot and put him through last year's show trial and kept him under house arrest.

Khieu Samphan, now 68, was the formal President of the regime and was a close ally of Pol Pot. But he had little independent power, Mr. Heder said.

Mr. Ieng Sary, No. 3 in the party and once Pol Pot's brother-in-law, is also 68. As Foreign Minister, he is thought to have had less responsibility for domestic, party or military affairs. When he broke away from Pol Pot he brought a number of troops with him, later backing Mr. Hun Sen.

While granting him a pardon for a Cambodian genocide conviction, King Sihanouk said at the time that Mr. Ieng Sary could be tried by an international court. But his arrest could create problems with the current Phnom Penh Government.

Kea Pok, also 68, mutineed against Mr. Ta Mok in the last few weeks, driving the Ta Mok group, including Pol Pot, out of Anlong Veng deeper toward the Thai border. He was involved, like the others, in the execution of those associated with the previous Lon Nol Government and led the massacre of thousands of Cham Muslims in eastern Cambodia.