Pol Pot's Final Days Were Filled With Fear And Illness -- Khmer Rouge Leader Heard Plot Against Him On Radio

BANGKOK - Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia's killing fields, spent his final days sick, hungry and fearful of dying, according to new details emerging from the Cambodian jungle.

He was suffering from diarrhea. He cried at the sight of the troops he once commanded collapsing along the roadside. And he could hear the sound of government artillery moving ever closer to his jungle redoubt - sometimes forcing him and his wife to cower in a freshly dug trench just outside their small wooden hut.

A final indignity came when Pol Pot learned on the Voice of America's Cambodian language broadcast that his former colleagues were negotiating to turn him over to an international tribunal to face genocide charges.

Pol Pot heard the news at 8 p.m. on April 15. Two hours and 15 minutes later, he was dead, apparently of a heart attack, his comrades and wife said.

These new insights into Pol Pot's final days have emerged in a detailed article in today's Far Eastern Economic Review written by correspondent Nate Thayer, a Cambodia expert who has spent the past decade reporting on the elusive guerrilla movement and who last year became the first reporter to interview Pol Pot in nearly two decades.

Thayer's account - based on hours of extensive interviews with Pol Pot's 40-year-old wife, Muon, and the new hard-line Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok - paint an extraordinary picture of Pol Pot's physical and mental deterioration. Most striking is that the Khmer Rouge leader deemed responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million to 1.7 million Cambodians expressed fear about his demise.

Ta Mok, the one-legged Khmer Rouge commander known as "the Butcher," told Thayer: "He wanted to live. He took medicine all the time. He wanted to live. He did not want to die, but he had lost everything and he was old."

Other Khmer Rouge leaders described Pol Pot's distress as he was being driven away from the front lines of the ongoing combat.

Seeing guerrillas he once commanded lying along the road without food or shelter upset the 73-year-old leader.

"He broke down into tears," said Gen. Noun Nou, who was driving the truck.

Muon, his wife, said: "He saw the people lying on the ground and he cried." Pol Pot then told her, "My only wish is that the Cambodians stay united, so that Vietnam will not swallow our country."

From the new accounts, Pol Pot's final days were those of a man hunted - and clearly afraid of being caught, particularly by Cambodian government troops whom he saw as puppets of Vietnam, historically foes of Cambodia. There was little food, once the government offensive forced the rebels from their base at Anlong Veng, said Khmer Rouge officials. "For the last few weeks he had diarrhea, and we haven't had much food because of the fighting with the traitors," Ta Mok said.

On April 10, five days before his death, Pol Pot dyed his gray hair black to fool the Khmer Rouge troops who had mutinied and were fighting on the side of the Phnom Penh government's forces.

At one point, Khmer Rouge leaders including Ta Mok told Pol Pot he might have to leave Cambodia, and tears reportedly welled in the former dictator's eyes. Their intention was to turn Pol Pot over to an international tribunal to gain new respectability. Khmer Rouge officials even asked for Thayer's advice on how to turn over Pol Pot, since they had no contacts with the United States or other Western countries or organizations. Thayer suggested the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Pol Pot apparently was led to believe he would be receiving asylum overseas, not being turned over for trial.

He apparently discovered the truth April 15 when he tuned in his shortwave radio - one of the few possessions he had left - to the 8 p.m. Cambodian language news broadcast on the Voice of America (VOA).

"He listened to VOA every night," Gen. Khem Nuon, the Khmer Rouge army chief of staff, told Thayer. "We thought the shock of hearing this on VOA might have killed him."

Thayer was the first journalist invited across the Cambodian border last Thursday to see the body, and he said Pol Pot seemed to have a pained expression on his face, with one eye shut and the other only half open. But Thayer said he looked closely at the body, even poking it, and saw no outward evidence of foul play.

The Khmer Rouge, though, were anxious to prove to the world that they did not kill Pol Pot. "I did not kill him," Ta Mok insisted to Thayer. "He was sitting in his chair, waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sounds of dying. When she touched him, he had already passed away."

Pol Pot had told Thayer of a genetic heart condition and serious respiratory problems. Thayer recalled how Pol Pot could only walk a few feet last year, and then "he was literally gasping for breath."

Thayer said in February, during another trip to the Khmer Rouge-held zone of Cambodia, he carried in heart medicine that the Khmer Rouge had requested for Pol Pot.

Ta Mok and other Khmer Rouge leaders said they hope Pol Pot's death will allow the group to rehabilitate its image and shed its murderous reputation. "Pol Pot has nothing to do with our movement," Ta Mok said. "It is Pol Pot who caused trouble to our movement. Without Pol Pot, our movement might not be like it is today."