Regime leader Pol Pot dies in sleep

Pol Pot died before midnight in northern Cambodia near the Thai border, said Nuon Nou, reached by telephone on the border. Nuon Nou was assigned to guard Pol Pot after he lost power in a bloody power struggle within the Khmer Rouge last year.

Nuon Nou said Pol Pot's wife informed Khmer officials of his death.

"She learned that her husband was dead when she was tying the (mosquito) net for him," Nuon Nou said. "He died in a hut built for him after he lost his power."

Thai military and Khmer Rouge ces, who demanded anonymity, gave heart failure as the cause of death. Nuon Nou, who said photos had been taken of the corpse as evidence, dismissed all suggestions of foul play. "No one has done anything like that," he said.

The Khmer Rouge would hold a traditional Khmer funeral for its former leader, the Nuon Nou said.

In the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, government spokesperson Khieu Kanharith demanded an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

"We request whoever has his body to turn it over to the government," he said, adding, "There are a lot of coincidences here."

Pol Pot's death, often rumored in recent years, comes amid reports that Khmer officials were bidding to hand over their former leader to an international tribunal and as Cambodian forces were drawing near the last Khmer rebels holed up in mountains near the Thai border.

Pol Pot orchestrated one of the most violent revolutions of the 20th century, turning Cambodia into a vast killing field and slave labor camp the 1970s. As many as one out of five Cambodians perished through executions, disease and starvation before neighboring Vietnam invaded in 1979, ending his campaign to remake Cambodia into a Marxist agrarian utopia.

04-16-98