Friday, 14 November 2008

UN Official To Visit for Tribunal Discussions

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
13 November 2008

Deputy UN Secretary-General Patricia Obrience will visit Cambodia next work for discussion of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, as the courts continue to face allegations of mismanagement and corruption, UN and government sources said.

Obrience will meet with Council Minister Sok An, who is the head of Cambodia’s UN negotiation team, on Nov. 20, sources said.

No details were available for her visit. UN tribunal spokesman Peter Foster could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The joint UN-Cambodia tribunal has five former Khmer Rouge leaders in custody and is preparing for the first trial ever, of prison chief Duch, in early 2009.

But the courts have been hounded by lingering allegations that Cambodian staff were forced to pay kickbacks to supervisors and officials in order to keep their positions at the courts, allegations that led to a freeze of funding to the Cambodian side of the courts by international donors.

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