HUN SEN

born April 4, 1951, Kmpng Cham province, Camb. Cambodian politician and leader of the government beginning in 1985. Hun Sen was educated at a Buddhist monastery, Wat Tuk La'ak, in Phnom Penh. In the late 1960s he joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea and in 1970 joined the Khmer Rouge, rising to the position of commandant. During the regime of Pol Pot (197579), during which an estimated two million Cambodians lost their lives, Hun Sen fled to Vietnam, joining troops there opposed to the Khmer Rouge. He returned to Cambodia after the Vietnamese installed a new government in 1979 and was made minister of foreign affairs. He became prime minister in 1985, a position he held until 1991, when he became part of a coalition government. In 1993 elections the royalist party of Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the son of head of state King Norodom Sihanouk, outpolled Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party. Hun Sen, however, refused to cede power, and under an agreement imposed by international powers a coalition government was formed, with the prince named first prime minister and Hun Sen second prime minister. In a violent coup in July 1997 Hun Sen deposed Prince Ranariddh, who had made overtures to remnants of the Khmer Rouge, and appointed a replacement. In March 1998 Hun Sen had the prince tried in absentia and found guilty of charges that included an attempt to overthrow the government. Prince Ranariddh was subsequently pardoned by his father, and he returned to Cambodia to take part in elections held in July 1998. This time Hun Sen outpolled the prince, but once again the two were forced to enter into a coalition government, with Prince Ranariddh made president of the National Assembly and Hun Sen becoming the sole prime minister. Twenty years after the fall of Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen grappled with how to foster national reconciliation and prosecute the surviving members of the Pol Pot regime for war crimes. The United Nations sought to bring the perpetrators to justice before an international tribunal, while Hun Sen insisted on relying on the Cambodian court system.