Le Duc Anh conveniently forgot that Hanoi also contributed to the formation of the Khmer Rouge movement

Ex-Vietnam leader on Khmer trial: 'Better late than never'

HANOI (AFP) - Former Vietnamese leader Le Duc Anh, who helped organise the 1979 invasion of Cambodia that helped topple the Khmer Rouge, on Wednesday hailed the start of the trial against the regime's chief torturer.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, went on trial Tuesday in a UN-backed court for crimes against humanity over his brutal rule at Tuol Sleng prison, where he is accused of presiding over the deaths of 15,000 men, women and children.

"Thirty years after the downfall of the Khmer Rouge, I say better late than never," Anh said in an interview with the online daily VietnamNet.

"Not judging them for what they did was almost like condoning the crimes of people who set up a genocidal regime."

Anh, who served as president of communist Vietnam from 1992-97, was one of the key leaders of the anti-American forces in South Vietnam during the war.

In late 1978 and early 1979, he helped organise Vietnam's invasion of neighbouring Cambodia, which led to the regime's fall in January that year.

Anh said Vietnam did not want to go to war with Phnom Penh but saw the invasion as self-defence, as Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot had repeatedly threatened to seize territory, and the only way to save the Cambodian people.

"Thousands of Vietnamese civilians were killed in border clashes initiated by Pol Pot," Anh said. "At the time, the Khmer Rouge had plans to fight their way to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City)."

"Without our support... how would the Cambodian people have risen up to liberate their own country?"

The ultra-communist Khmer Rouge killed about two million people during its four-year reign of terror - nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population at the time.