P arts of the original text in Stephen Heder's "The debate to etch history in

stone" (Phnom Penh Post, June 16 - 29 pg 19) were missing from the published

version. The corrected paragraphs read:

A deal contrary to US and Chinese

wishes might also have offered the PDK chances to extend its power and

influence. There could have been no guarantee that ASEAN, Japan and Australia,

acting against the wishes of the US, China and other Permanent Five actors,

could have crafted a deal, maneuvered the relevant Cambodian players into

accepting it, and then successfully ensured such a stable and effective outcome

that the PDK would have been politically and militarily checkmated.

Both

assertions were egregiously and dangerously wrong at the time they were made,

and subsequent events have demonstrated that the argument-saving device of

depicting Funcinpec as a Khmer Rouge Trojan horse had no basis in

reality.

This ambition led Pol Pot into the Paris Agreements and to be

prepared to take the risk of at least partial and temporary military

demobilization if the political conditions were perceived as sufficiently

favorable to the PDK. The course of events after October 1991 convinced him and

most other PDK leaders that political conditions were unfavorable, and thus to

refrain from demobilization and progressively resume military action against

SoC.

The logic of the Paris Agreements and their implementation was to

put the PDK in the position either of accepting an imperfect but reasonable

chance of rejoining the Cambodian political mainstream through peaceful

participation in the political process...

Instead, this danger has

receded, although genocidal acts and other egregious human rights abuses by the

PDK continue. As for the human rights picture in Cambodia more generally,

Kiernan's studied avoidance of SoC's human rights record means he is unable to

deal with the implications of the real results of the implementation of the

Agreements for human rights in most of Cambodia.