Duch - 'US helped Pol Pot's rise to power'

Describing the tangled politics of Cambodia as the Vietnam War raged on the country's eastern border, and the Khmer Rouge recruited peasants and intellectuals disillusioned with Prince Sihanouk's autocratic regime, he said he believed Pol Pot's revolution would have come to an end in 1970 if US policy had not presented him with a 'golden opportunity'.

"I think the Khmer Rouge would already have been demolished," he said. "But Mr. Kissinger (the then U.S. Secretary of State) and Richard Nixon were quick (to back General Lon Nol, the right wing coup leader), and then the Khmer Rouge noted the golden opportunity."

Pol Pot seized on the US intervention in Cambodian politics as a propaganda tool to increase recruitment, and build power as it battled Lon Nol's regime between 1970 - 1975. The coup led to a significant increase in support from the Vietnamese communists which was to prove crucial in bringing Pol Pot to power.

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