Cambodia's UN-assisted genocide tribunal seeking to triple budget

Khmer Rouge Tribunal's judges and staff in session.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Cambodia's U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal is seeking to triple its budget to US$170 million (euro116 million) in order to keep operating through March 2011, a tribunal spokesman said Thursday.News of the request was announced as one of five former high-ranking Khmer Rouge being held for trial was arguing before the
court for his release from pre-trial detention.Nuon Chea, who was the main ideologist for the now defunct communist group, has been held since Sept. 19 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in the group's brutal 1975-79 rule, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.The tribunal's request for an increase from the originally budgeted US$56.3 million (euro38.5 million) was made to donor nations on Jan. 30 in New York, tribunal spokesman Peter Foster said.The tribunal, which opened its offices in early 2006 after years of wrangling between the Cambodian government and the U.N., took five leading suspects into custody last year, and hopes to begin their trials later this year.No date had been previously been fixed for the end of the trial, though some legal experts had suggested it might be possible to wrap things up by 2009.«I think it's safe to say that this is a much more realistic budget for us to accomplish our mandate, and probably the original budget should have been closer to this in the first place,» Foster told The Associated Press.He said the additional budget was needed to «fill out the gaps» for funding services such as victim support units, translation, interpreting and audiovisual presentations.«We need the time, we need that money,» he said. «Now it's up to the international community, the Cambodian government, the United Nations, to fill those gaps and come up with these funds.Nuon Chea, speaking to the tribunal at his hearing Thursday, said he would not try to flee Cambodia to escape justice.«I have no intention to run away from my beloved country ... or to exercise any pressure and influence on witnesses,» Nuon Chea said as the hearing on his appeal resumed after a two-day postponement, this time with the help of a foreign lawyer who was earlier barred from representing him.In their detention order last year, the tribunal's investigating judges charged the 81-year-old Nuon Chea with involvement in crimes including «murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, enslavement and other inhumane acts.They said detention is necessary to prevent Nuon Chea from pressuring witnesses, destroying evidence and escaping, as well as for his own safety, which could be at risk if he was released.Nuon Chea has denied any guilt, saying he is not a «cruel» man and calling himself «a patriot and not a coward» trying to run away. He has also argued the judges did not have sufficient grounds to detain him.