When the Vietnamese toppled the Pol Pot government in 1979, the Khmer Rouge disappeared into the jungle. The regime boycotted the 1993 elec­tions and later rejected peace talks aimed at creating a ceasefire.

The defection of some 2000 troops from the Khmer Rouge army in the months after the elections offered some hope that the long-running insur­rection would fizzle out However, government-sponsored amnesty pro­grammes initially turned out to be ill-conceived: the policy of reconscripting Khmer Rouge troops and returning them to fight their former comrades with poor pay and conditions provided little incentive to desert

In 1994 the Khmer Rouge resorted to a new tactic of targeting tourists, with horrendous results for a number of foreigners in Cambodia. During 1994 three people were taken from a taxi on the road to Sihanoukville and subsequently shot. A few months later another three foreigners were seized from a train bound for Sihanoukville and in the ransom drama that followed they were executed, probably some time in September, as the army closed in.

The government changed its course during the mid-1990s, opting for more carrot and less stick in a bid to end the war. The breakthrough came in August 1996 when leng Sary, Brother No 3 in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy and foreign minister during its rule, was denounced by Pol Pot for corruption. He subsequently led a mass defection of fighters and their dependants from the Pailin area, and this effectively sealed the fate of the remaining Khmer Rouge. Pailin, rich in gems and timber, had long been the economic springboard from which the Khmer Rouge could launch counter-offensives against the government. The severing of this income, coupled with the fact that government forces now had only one front on which to concentrate their resources, suggested the days of civil war were numbered.

By 1997 cracks were appearing in the brittle coalition and the fledgling democracy once again found itself under siege. On 31 March 1997 a grenade was thrown into a group of Sam Rainsy supporters demonstrat­ing peacefully outside the National Assembly. Many were killed and Sam Rainsy narrowly escaped injury. He fled into self-imposed exile, blaming Hun Sen and the CPP for the attack. However, it was the Khmer Rouge that again grabbed the headlines. Pol Pot ordered the execution of Son Sen, defence minister during the Khmer Rouge regime, and many of his family members. This provoked a putsch within the Khmer Rouge leadership, and the one-legged hardline general Ta Mok seized control of the movement and put Pol Pot on 'trial'. Rumours flew about Phnom Penh that Pol Pot would be brought there to face international justice, but attention dramatically shifted back to the capital.