High registration fees for foreign lawyers to join the tribunal for trial of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) leaders, remain a problem during the discussion of its internal rules, a press officer said here on Saturday.

"The latest decision of the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC) imposes a fee that is unacceptable to the international judges, who consider that it severely limits the rights of the accused and victims to select counsel of their choice," said Reach Sambath in a press release, issued one day after the Review Committee of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) concluded a 10-day session here on Friday on the draft internal rules.

"The international judges believe that the failure to fix an appropriate fee places an obstacle to adopting the rules while the national judges consider that the registration fee, being an issue outside the scope of the draft internal rules and should not be an obstacle to their adoption," he said, adding that the Review Committee discussed in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreement, although some fine tuning remains to be done.

The judges are ready to hold a plenary at the end of April. For international judges, this will be possible only if a satisfactory resolution of this issue is reached, he said.

"In order to find a solution that is acceptable to all parties, so that the plenary can proceed on April 30, the BAKC is invited to reconsider its position as soon as possible and the ECCC Defense Support Section is requested to work closely with the bar on this process," he said.

All members of the committee remain dedicated to completing this complex effort of successfully harmonizing international and national law so that the ECCC can discharge its historic responsibility to find justice for the Cambodian people, he added.

The United Nations and Cambodia agreed to the current tribunal framework in 2003 after six years of talks, but the process is now again in question as foreign and Cambodian jurists fight over internal rules that govern the trials.

Trials were initially expected to begin in mid-2007, but delays have pushed back the start date until next year, tribunal officials say.

According to independent research, about 1.7 million people died of starvation, overwork and mass grave killing in the DK era in the 1970s.

Source: Xinhua