A three man team of U.N. legal experts is in Cambodia this week to explore the possibility of war crime tribunals. The move has been hailed as a chance to bring those responsible for the Khmer Rouge killing fields to justice. For many rural Cambodians living in isolated towns, however, there are reasons to view the impending trials with ambivalence. PNS correspondent Joshua Phillips lived and traveled widely in Cambodia in the mid-1990s and recently returned from a one month trip there.

ANLONG VENG, CAMBODIA -- The United Nations decision to send a team of legal experts to Cambodia has been hailed as a chance to bring leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge to justice. But the idea of war crimes trials stirs little enthusiasm from people living in the countryside, where Khmer Rouge guerrillas still spread terror, and killer and victim are often blood relatives.

Anlong Veng is an isolated village about 200 miles north of Phnom Penh. Until last March, the Khmer Rouge was in full ironclad control through Ta Mok, the one legged commander known as "the butcher." Residents say a family could be slaughtered for listening to the BBC.

Ta Mok no longer rules Anlong Veng, but he and a handful of toughened warriors hold out just miles away near the Thai border, and he remains a forbidding presence. On election day last July, he and his men killed eleven villagers and gunfire and the sounds of shelling still ring out sporadically.

Talk of war crimes and trials seems far removed from everyday experience. My translator, Mao, 25, talks about retribution. "Do you know how we deal with this idea of 'justice,' in the tradition of Thervada Buddhism? We believe that true justice will be delivered in the next life."

Mao describes an imagined Buddhist hell: eyes gouged out, tongues and ears cut off, bodies impaled on sharp sticks, etc.

I remark that this gruesome scene reminds me of Khmer Rouge atrocities. "Yes," he answers.

All over Cambodia one hears similar reservations -- for villagers here, the time for punishment is far away. "I don't know about future tribunals," says one nervous government soldier. "I'm still scared about Khmer Rouge forces nearby."

Villagers were greatly relieved when General Yim Panna was appointed district commander of the area. Yim Panna is now the protector of this community -- never mind that he once loyally served under "the Butcher."

Yim Panna lives in a palatial house which once belonged to Ta Mok. We sit surrounded by grand, colorful paintings of the Angkor Wat temples, sip tea and speak about general politics. Mao, my twenty-five year old translator, is very careful. "What is your position on the war tribunals?" I ask.

For once, Panna does not respond immediately. He muses a while, and finally answers. "It would be very complicated if we had an international court in Cambodia," he says. "Ta Mok should be tried. Maybe even the United States would be implicated."

The reasons for Panna's evasiveness become clear later in a talk with Craig Etcheson, formerly with Yale's Cambodia Genocide Program and now at the International Monitor Institute in New Haven, Connecticut. According to Etcheson, my charming host is a "hands-on killer who has committed some very serious abuses."

Etcheson has been advocating tribunals for years, and he sees them as "a necessary tonic for achieving genuine reconciliation on ongoing problems within Cambodia."

Tan Vat, a taxi driver here, is not so sure. "I don't know who should stand trial," he says. "Pol Pot should definitely be tried, but now he's dead."

The matter of determining who should be condemned is clearly a political minefield.

Few are in a better position to understand this dilemma than Mao. Yim Panna is Mao's cousin. Years of war and a barricade of landmines in the north have kept them from seeing each other until now. Both accompany me to the airfield, laughing and joking as we wait for the helicopter -- Panna in a brand new uniform, adorned with gold jewelry, Mao in a white shirt and traditional Cambodian scarf. After he departs, I ask Mao if it is possible that his cousin could have killed members of his immediate family.

He meditates over my question. "Maybe," he answers, "but we both lost most of our family to the Khmer Rouge."