The World : Cambodia Offers Elections

Cambodia’s Vietnamese-backed rulers, in a major move toward ending an eight-year-old political deadlock, proposed free elections for a coalition government that would include opposition leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The coalition also would include some members of the armed resistance but not the Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for a bloody repression in Cambodia before it was ousted in 1979 by the Vietnamese. The official news agency SPK carried a statement from Phnom Penh spelling out a five-point offer, which is the closest authorities have come to meeting the conditions of a U.N.-endorsed peace plan.