Mr. Kiernan, a leading authority on the Khmer Rouge era who teaches history at Yale, is remembered by many as a defender of the Cambodian Communists, even when accounts of their atrocities began emerging in the late 1970's.

The original FUNSK group was formed within Cambodia in an area around Kratie that had been liberated from the Khmer Rouge by Cambodian Communists and Khmer Rouge defectors.

One way to try to understand why the Cambodian Communists acted as they did is to enter into the mind of a well-educated, intelligent woman" like Khoun Sophal.

When the Cambodian Communists seized the American merchant ship Mayagüez in May 1975, Mr. Ford reacted with uncharacteristic emotion, sending United States military forces to recapture the ship.

Hak studied theatre in Paris, where he became associated with the group of radical students centered on Keng Vannsak, which included several future leaders of the Cambodian Communists.

Mr. Hun Sen told reporters today that he had warned party leaders last year that if the Cambodian Communists did not reform themselves, he would form his own breakaway political organization.

The Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists who terrorized and brutalized the nation from 1975 to 1979, killed their husbands and children while vandalizing the glories of their civilization.

Mr. Vann, who pretended he could not read when interned by the Cambodian Communists so they would not kill him, values nothing so much as his children's education - and his own.

They laughed in embarrassment when the visitor recalled that in fact the Vietnamese minority had not fled from the Cambodian Communists but had been driven out, many of them killed and their property sacked, by the forces of the American-supported Lon Nol Government and much of the civilian population.

Husband Lost to Pol Pot He allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists who tore the country apart after the Vietnam War.