CAMBODIA: KHMER ROUGE GUERRILLAS ARE DEFECTING TO GOVERNMENT

(2 Apr 1998) Khmer/Eng/Nat Khmer Rouge hard-liners in Cambodia have regained ground from mutineers supported by government troops and taken thousands of civilians back under their control, according to Thai army officials. Hundreds of Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia have been defecting to the government, including members from the group’s hard-line headquarters in Anlong Veng. The Cambodian government claims that so far some 15-hundred guerrillas have joined them since last week. Maintaining the propaganda war, Khmer Rouge leaders claimed to have shot down a personnel transport helicopter with 44 people on board - a claim quickly refuted. Fighting continues for control of Anlong Veng, the jungle headquarters of Cambodia’s last Khmer Rouge faction. The Anlong Veng faction is the last remnant of the Khmer Rouge to have resisted peace with the government since the revolutionary group ruptured in 1996. But mutineers rebelled against th