Already, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge has taught the world that it's possible to murder an estimated 2 million of your own people, run away to the jungle afterward and avoid retribution for decades. Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader known as Brother Number One, evaded an international trial by dying in that jungle last April at the ripe age of 73, a young bride at his side.

But Pol Pot's achievement has been trumped by two former colleagues: Nuon Chea, 71, once honored as Brother Number Two, and Khieu Samphan, 67, Cambodia's head of state during the Killing Fields era. Last week, the two aging comrades abandoned their jungle hideouts, announcing they wanted to come in from the political cold. Instead of tossing them into jail, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen declared they should be greeted "with bouquets of flowers, not with prisons and handcuffs." No flowers were evident, but Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were installed in a luxury hotel in Phnom Penh and given VIP treatment, then sent with their families for a sojourn at a seaside resort. Both made a public apology for the legions who died of torture, forced labor, assassination and starvation, with Khieu Samphan, blithely adding: "Let bygones be bygones."

That both men might get that wish says a lot about Hun Sen and his desire for complete control of Cambodia. A former Khmer Rouge commander himself, he became the group's biggest enemy by heading the Vietnamese-installed government that chased them into the jungle. Apparently nothing can stop Hun Sen from getting what he wants. When denied an electoral mandate in the country's first postwar elections in 1993, he demanded a power sharing arrangement with the victor, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. When he got tired of sharing, he booted Ranariddh out of the prime ministership, sent tanks to shell the prince's house and then won a set of dubious elections last July. He portrays amnesty for Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea as necessary for national conciliation. "We have to dig a hole and bury the past," he intoned last week--a jarring, if apt, metaphor considering the horrendous details of Cambodia's history.

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