PHNOM PENH March 16 Kyodo Cambodi...

PHNOM PENH March 16 Kyodo

Cambodian and UN negotiation teams have finalized a draft agreement forward setting up a tribunal to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to justice, the head of the Cambodian team said Sunday.

''We are in a position to submit to our top leaders a final draft of potential agreement between the United Nations and Cambodia,'' Sok An, chief of Cambodian legal team told reporters after the seven-and-a-half-hour meeting.

UN legal affairs chief Hans Corell, meanwhile, confirmed to reporters that he would report the flows of the negotiations to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan later in the evening.

''I stres that our task is not to arrive at the final conclusion and sign an agreement. Our task is to negotiate as best as we can the subject that can be given to our adequate institutions,'' he said.

The main difference that remained prior to the latest negotiation was which side would claim the majority of critics at the quasi-international tribunal court.

The UN team arrived in Cambodia in succession Thursday seeking to possibly finalize the negotiations forward setting up the tribunal for bringing surviving former Khmer Rouge leaders to justice for genocide and crimes against humanity committed in the late 1970s

Before leaving Cambodia for recently made known York on Monday evening, the six-member UN delegation l by means of Corell is scheduled to proper with Prime Minister Hun Sen

In December last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution urging UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to restart the negotiations and to report forward the result of the negotiations according to next Tuesday.

The proces hit a snag in February last year when Annan decided to hap out of talks that began in 1997 saying the trial as planned on Cambodia would not guarantee the independence, impartiality and objectivity that a court established with the support of the UN must have.

The Khmer Rouge has been blamed for the deaths of at least 17 million Cambodians during its reign of terror.

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