U.S. Revives Diplomatic Role in Cambodia : Southeast Asia: American envoy to coalition predicts a ‘new era’ in nation’s history.

More than 16 years after the last American diplomat fled Cambodia at a moment of crushing defeat in Indochina, a U.S. envoy arrived here on Monday to re-establish a permanent mission in the former Communist country.

“This is a historic occasion,” said Charles H. Twining, the U.S. special representative to Cambodia’s new coalition government. “We are about to embark upon the implementation of a plan that will lead to a new era in Cambodian history.”

Twining, accompanied by a Cambodian interpreter and a U.S. aid official, flew into Phnom Penh on a small propeller-driven commercial aircraft from Bangkok. Twining’s arrival was low-key, in marked contrast to the departure of John Gunther Dean, the last U.S. ambassador to Phnom Penh who fled the country in a U.S. military helicopter as hard-line Communist guerrillas of the Khmer Rouge closed in on the capital in April, 1975.

Also on Monday’s flight was David Burns, who will serve as Britain’s ambassador to the Supreme National Council, the four-party coalition government headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s deposed ruler. Sihanouk has promised to return for an emotional homecoming Thursday.

Japan, which has pledged a large aid package for Cambodia, already has an ambassador in Phnom Penh. France and Australia are sending envoys this week.

The role of diplomats like Twining and Burns is diplomatically awkward because neither of their governments recognize the current Phnom Penh regime, and they cannot conduct official business with the Foreign Ministry in Phnom Penh, although for all practical purposes there is no other real authority than the council in the country.

Under a peace agreement signed in Paris last month, Cambodia will be governed during an interim period before elections by the coalition council, with the peace being kept by soldiers and civilians in a large United Nations force called the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia. A U.N.-supervised election is scheduled for April, 1993.

While the transitional force is taking shape at the United Nations in New York, the world body has dispatched a small advance mission to Cambodia, which began arriving here on Saturday. The mission will attempt to begin monitoring a cease-fire among the four Cambodian factions and will conduct on-site surveys to determine how large the eventual U.N. peacekeeping force will need to be. Some initial estimates have put the force at 2,000 people and the total cost at $1 billion to $2 billion.

Ataul Karim, a Bangladeshi diplomat who heads the U.N. advance mission, said the organization will be deployed in two phases, with the first stage ending in mid-December. He estimated that the organization would last about 6 months.

“I don’t see U.N. soldiers being involved in any combat action,” said Lt. Col. Russell Stuart, who heads the Australian military mission to provide communications and logistic support to the early U.N. deployment. He told a news conference that his men are “lightly armed.”

The Khmer Rouge, responsible for more than 1 million deaths from 1975 to 1979, has expressed concern about the safety of its representatives, Khieu Samphan and Son Sen, when they return to the capital for the first time to take part in the deliberations of the national council. They will be allowed only a small group of bodyguards.

Six members of the Cambodian council are drawn from the current Cambodian government and the other six from the resistance coalition that has been fighting Phnom Penh since a Vietnamese invasion in 1979.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen flew from Beijing to Bangkok on Monday to pick up Sihanouk, who will take up residence in the enormous royal palace complex along the banks of the Mekong River, although Sihanouk’s royal position is no longer recognized.

Twining, 51, is a senior U.S. diplomat who came from Washington, where he was the State Department’s desk officer for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. He speaks Khmer, the Cambodian language.

The United States still has no relations with Vietnam, which it also fled in 1975, although its ties with Laos have continued unabated. The U.S. has sent several diplomatic missions to Indochina in the past, primarily to seek the remains of American servicemen listed as missing during the war. But Twining’s group is the first permanent mission to be established here since the end of the Vietnam War.