BANGKOK. Nov 10 ; The Americans thought they could destroy Sihanouk the former Camhodtan monarch said recently to a friend during a visit to New York, gesturing towards a group of US secret him for’hto’protection, reports AFP.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk s voter then race to a high pitch as he almost screamed:

The Prince was completing months of tireless efforts to broker peace in Cambodia when he recalled the US backed coup which overthrew him in 1970

At 69. Prince Sihanouk. now the leader of the Supreme National Council (SNC) of hto country's rival factions. can took back on a career which span. hag a nmtitey of awa

To hto admirers he to the

dependence from France, the last surviving founding father of the Non- Aligned Movement ■nd a leader affectionately known to his people as ■aamdechev." or 'honorable

To his critic. he to a mer curial prince who flies by the •eat of hto panto- he to unpre dlctabte and reacts to events as they unfurl without following any particular strategy

Hto years in power as an autocratic playboy. critics charge, ted to political suppression and economic regre ston and were largely respon-sfote for the dramatic succession of tragedies that has be fallen Canfoodia since 1970.

That year Candtodians found themselves engulfed in the Vietnam War. Me years later they were under the yoke of the murderous Khmer Rouge ••eminent fad by M Mt. and finally they were eaught in C—diodta's just-ended 13ye«r clvfl war.

Which ever the case, the

Prince has remained Cambodia's most respected leader internationally, also retaining a strong following among his some eight million countrymen.

Prince Sihanouk's political weight and flare were clearly In evidence when, with no military force to speak of. he became in June the Chairman of the Council, which will repre -

sent Cambodia's sovereignty while the United Nations administers the country ahead of elections.

in so doing he dropped a fractious and controversial alliance with the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia's deposed marxist ruling group, which had become the strongest guerilla group fighting the Phnom .Penh government.

He also cast himself as the face - saving solution to end the rivalry between China, which backed the Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam, whose forces installed the Phnom Penh government tn 1979 Once again, he took centre Stage to become the architect of peace in his country.

Prince Sihanouk's career began In 1941, when the French made him king because they thought he would be docile

After having^^ecared

tivc power aa either Head of

State or Prime Minister. He also took time off to direct melodramatic films, compose romantic songs In French or Cambodian, or play the saxo phone

All of this came to an end In March 1970, when Prince Sihanouk was overthrown while on a trip to France and the Soviet Union in a coup supported by the United States.

U 8 forces Invaded Cambodia shortly afterward In a vain bid to stop Hanot's communist troop. from using the country to invade south Vietnam

The Prince then went to Beijing where he accepted Io

a front entirely dondnated by his fu—r Khmer Rouge foes.

And when the Khmer Rouge then backed by both Bering and Hanoi seized power in 197S. he returned to Cambodia- renamed Democratic Kampuchea to

Not for long. real power was

with Pol Pot and his group of French trained radical revolutionaries.

Prince Sihanouk was soon kx-ked up in his Phnom Penh Palace as hundreds of thou sands, including 14 of his children and grand children, were executed or starved to death In what came to be known as the "killing fields."

Hit life, however, was spared and a mere 24 hours before forces from Vietnam, which had turned against its former Khmer Rouge ally, overran Phnom Penh on January 7. 1979. a Chinese aircraft flew the Prince to

Three years later, under the combined pressure of China, the United States and the non communist Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Prince Sihanouk accepted the leadership of a guerilla coalition, dominated by the Khmer Rouge, to ftghl Vietnam and Its Phnom Penh allies in Cambodia