
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 27, 1993                   TAG: 9309280007
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA                                LENGTH: Short

U.N. ENDS PEACE MISSION IN CAMBODIA

With a final flourish of pomp and fanfare, the United Nations ended its peacekeeping mission Sunday as Yasushi Akashi, the Japanese head of the operation, bid an emotional farewell to the newly reconstituted kingdom of Cambodia.

The U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia, known as UNTAC, completed its 18-month mission as the largest, most ambitious and most expensive U.N. peacekeeping operation to date.

Touted as a model for future U.N. missions, it carried out a broad administrative assignment and presided over a transfer of authority from a former one-party, communist state to a new, multi-party democracy under a restored constitutional monarch.

Officials of the world body point to Cambodia as a success story. But as Akashi observed Sunday, most of the credit goes to the Cambodian people.

At a time when UNTAC was close to losing its nerve, Cambodians turned out en masse to vote in the May 23-28 U.N.-supervised elections, defying threats from Khmer Rouge guerrillas as well as violence and threats beforehand by the Phnom Penh government.

by CNB