The Khmer Rouge may be unlikely gourmets, but the Restaurant Pailin is now open for business. There is a range of French red wine on the sideboard, gleaming silver rice bowls on the tables and very few customers.
Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's former foreign minister and now his most famous defector, is sitting at a large wooden table in the VIP room. Pailin is deep in the mountains west of Phnom Penh but Ieng Sary is ordering a feast of steamed mackerel and squid from the Gulf of Thailand.
His guards sit at a table outside, AK-47s across their knees as they sip soft drinks under a wall of plastic flowers, photos and framed pictures of King Norodom Sihanouk and Queen Monique.
Pailin is the glittering prize of Cambodia's civil war - the gem mining and logging hub that until recently funded the ultra-Maoists' jungle rebellion to the tune of up to US$10 million (about HK$77.5 million) a month. Khmer Rouge hardliners loyal to Pol Pot remain dug in on mountains to the northeast and Pailin is now at the heart of territory controlled by Ieng Sary's breakaway 'defectors'.
Despite four months' of peace with Phnom Penh, government influence barely exists. Ieng Sary's group pays no taxes, controls property rights and implements their own laws. Many soldiers still sport the Mao caps from their days under Pol Pot.
On the strength of promises, Ieng Sary was pardoned by the king from an in absentia death sentence and his troops given new arms and government uniforms to defend themselves. A formal peace agreement was never signed.
As national elections approach next year, foreign analysts and Cambodian officials are starting to wonder whether the deal is merely a cease-fire. Has Pailin degenerated into an autonomous zone of the 'Nouveau Khmer Rouge'? 'Why do we need a peace agreement?' Ieng Sary asks. 'We and Pailin are part of the government now. There is no need for a peace agreement between different parts of the government. We are different to the Khmer Rouge. We are our own movement now and trying to make new lives.' Driving along the rutted and heavily-mined dirt trails to Pailin it is only once you near the town that the defectors' control becomes evident. Elsewhere it is check-point anarchy.
