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PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - CAMBODIA and the United Nations have agreed to set up a team of experts to review the budget and timescale for the kingdom's Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal, an official said on Friday.
'Independent experts will examine how long (the tribunal will last) and how much money we really need,' official Phay Siphan told a news conference.
The government and the United Nations will hammer out further details on the team, he said.
The agreement came on the heels of the tribunal's request earlier this month for another 114 million dollars from donors in a bid to keep the cash-strapped court running until 2011.
So far, five former top Khmer Rouge cadres have been arrested as Cambodia struggles to come to terms with its bloody past.
The suspects include 81-year-old Nuon Chea, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's most trusted deputy.
Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed by the Khmer Rouge, which dismantled modern Cambodian society in its effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia.
Cities were emptied, their populations exiled to vast collective farms, while schools were closed, religion banned and the educated classes targeted for extermination.
Pol Pot died in his remote jungle camp in 1998. -- AFP
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