Rejoicing over Pol Pot's capture and possible trial may be premature. The Khmer Rouge movement he led for so many years is far from finished even as outbursts of political violence renew fears of civil war. PNS commentator Thi Lam, a former general in the army of South Vietnam and a teacher and writer now living in San Jose, Ca., examines the reasons for Cambodia's ongoing political chaos.

As Cambodia awaits formal admission to Association of Southeastern Nations (ASEAN) at a foreign ministers' meeting in Malaysia next month, the news of Pol Pot's capture by his renegade guerrillas has been greeted as cause for rejoicing.

But the cheering may be premature since the capture -- or even death -- of Pol Pot is unlikely to mean the end of the Khmer Rouge. Some Cambodia watchers, in fact, suggest that Pol Pot's "surrender" may be merely a ploy intended to clear the way for an amnesty for his former lieutenants and the eventual participation of a revived Khmer Rouge movement in a new coalition government.

One thing is certain: Pol Pot's capture will intensify the already explosive rivalry between Cambodia's two co-prime ministers as they vie for the allegiance of the defecting Khmer Rouge guerrillas, whose support is considered crucial for next year's elections. It is no secret that Prince Norodom Ramaridh, First Prime Minister and leader of the Royalist Party or FUNCINPEC, has met with Khieu Samphan, the leader of the Khmer Rouge dissident faction, to discuss the latter's possible role in a new government.

Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, leader of the Cambodia People's Party or CPP, so far less successful in luring defecting guerrillas into his camp, threatened to arrest those Khmer Rouge leaders who are staying inside Cambodia. "Instead of the government splitting the Khmer Rouge," Hun Sen recently complained, "it is the Khmer Rouge who are dividing the government."

The latest rivalry exploded June 16 as police and bodyguards loyal to the co-rulers fought each other in a bloody gun battle in central Phnom Penh that left three dead. These battles, coming on the heels of a grenade attack last March on a peaceful demonstration led by former Finance Minister Sam Rainsy, have heightened fears of a new civil war. They also underscore the violent and unpredictable nature of Cambodian politics.

The complexity of the situation owes much to the multiple conflicting foreign interests in Cambodia. Vietnam backed Hun Sen since it invaded Cambodia in 1978. The United States and China, in their efforts to contain the then Soviet Union's influence in this part of the world, provided military assistance to the Khmer Rouge in the early 1980s. And some Thai businesses have maintained close economic ties with the Khmer Rouge all along , and have a vested interest in exploring gem mining and logging along the northern Thai border.

A more immediate cause of the current political chaos, however, is the United Nations' failure to provide Cambodia with a realistic and workable political structure. It should have been obvious to UN officials that a coalition government headed by two co-prime ministers with equal powers and divergent, even conflicting, ideologies and interests can't function in a peaceful and orderly manner.

Some analysts accused the UN of practicing a new colonialism by imposing democracy on a country plagued by irreconcilable enmities and traumas. "How many more Cambodians have to die," asked one journalist, "before the world learns to distinguish between an election and a democracy?"

The UN's biggest mistake, however, was its failure to carry out its mandate under the 1991 Paris Peace Accords -- namely, the disarmament of the Khmer Rouge. This resulted in the ouster of the UN's deputy commander, French General Michel Loridon, who called for a military assault on the Khmer Rouge strongholds.

It is not unusual, in fact, for the United Nations and Western powers involved in a civil war to become so eager to restore peace and end suffering that they leave the war criminals alone as the price for a brokered peace. One year after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed, Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Bosnian Serbs, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic -- both indicted on charges of genocide by the International Tribunal at the Hague -- remain at large.

A Western political analyst recently noted that "Whoever said that tragedy was but unfinished comedy must have Cambodia in mind." For the innocent Cambodian people who have suffered so much, this ongoing tragi-comedy has already lasted far too long.