The United Nations and Cambodia signed an agreement today in Phnom Penh to hold genocide trials of former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, following six years of negotiations between the two parties and 24 years after the massacre of more than 1.7 million Cambodians.

Khmer Rouge leaders are accused of killing almost a quarter of Cambodia's population through starvation, disease and execution between 1975 and 1979.  Although the regime's leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, many Khmer Rouge leaders now live freely in Cambodia.

U.N. legal counsel Hans Corell and Cambodia's chief negotiator of the pact, Sok An, signed the document, which now must be ratified by Cambodia's legislature.  Corell and others have warned that it may be a long time before trials are held.

According to the agreement, most of the judges for the trials will be Cambodians, although at least one foreign judge must participate as well.  Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have said that the trial arrangement makes it too vulnerable to political influence of the Cambodian government (Ker Munthit, Associated Press/Yahoo! News, June 6).