Hun Sen spoke in an interview on the American television network ABC's program "Nightline,'' which earlier this week aired video images of Pol Pot's trial a week ago by comrades who turned against him.
"I think it is a farce, political farce,'' Hun Sen told interviewer Ted Koppel on Wednesday. "They took him off in an air-conditioned Land Cruiser. It doesn't seem to me that he was under much strain at the time.''
Hun Sen said the trial where the aging, ailing Pol Pot was heckled by a crowd and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life had denied justice to Cambodia, still suffering from the genocidal rule he imposed between 1975 and 1979.
"I want to send him to an international court,'' Hun Sen said. "This is an international problem.''
At Yale University in the United States, an American researcher collecting evidence to be used if Pol Pot is ever tried by a real court called the Khmer Rouge proceedings "political theater.''
"This has been called a trial of Pol Pot, but in reality it is nothing of the sort,'' said Craig Etcheson, acting director of the Cambodian Genocide Center.
Etcheson said he could not rule out theories that Pol Pot orchestrated the whole event and still retains power. He added that he would not be surprised if the group soon announces the death of the ousted leader.
On Thursday, the foreign secretary of the Philippines said officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will meet Hun Sen, who staged a violent coup earlier this month, in a renewed attempt to restore peace and stability.
Cambodia was to join ASEAN last week along with Burma and Laos, but admission was postponed in protest of Hun Sen's coup against his co-premier, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.
Koppel asked why Hun Sen didn't send his stronger forces to Anlong Veng, the guerrillas' northern base, to arrest Pol Pot.
Hun Sen replied that he would weaken the guerrillas through defections and wanted to persuade neighboring Thailand "to cooperate for the arrest of Pol Pot.''
Khmer Rouge guerrillas long have crossed the border with ease, dealing in gems and timber with Thai companies. Thailand was an arms channel to the group during the 1980s, when it was supported by China and the United States against Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia.
Hun Sen deposed his co-premier in a bloody coup July 5-6 as the prince was negotiating a deal with the Khmer Rouge.
Negotiators had tried to get the rebels to turn over Pol Pot but were more interested in using the guerrillas to beef up their strength against Hun Sen's larger army.
Pol Pot led the Maoist-inspired regime that seized power in 1975 until it was toppled by Vietnam in 1979. Pol Pot waged civil war from the jungles until the defection of thousands of war-weary guerrillas over the past year left him isolated.
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