Cambodia rejects UN envoy's rights charges

PHNOM PENH, June 1 (Reuters) Cambodia rejected allegations by a United Nations investigator that human right violations, including assassinations and illegal restrictions on trade unions, were going unpunished.

''It cannot accept allegations which do not reflect the truth,'' the Interior Ministry said in a statement today.

Yash Ghai, special representative of the secretary-general for human rights in Cambodia, had also failed to acknowledge the progress made in a country still recovering from decades of civil war, it said.

''The negative evaluation report was insulting the efforts of the government's supreme institutions,'' it said.

Gash, in a statement issued in Geneva yesterday after a three-day visit to Cambodia, said what he called impunity for human rights violations continued to pose a threat to the rule of law.

He expressed alarm at ''attacks and intimidation against members of the workers' movement in the course of the past year and about alleged ''land grabbing'' and government grants of concessions including mining licences on indigenous land.

REUTERS DS KN1850