Canadian sworn in at Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh

Long-awaited trials for Cambodia's surviving Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of genocide moved a step closer on Monday with the swearing-in of judges and prosecutors including a Canadian.

In an elaborate ceremony at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Buddhist priests tookoaths from27officials of the tribunals, 17 Cambodian and ten from foreign countries.

Among the foreign prosecutors sworn in on Monday isRobert Petit, a 45-year-old lawyer fromOttawawho works forJustice Canada's War Crimes division. Petit has sat on a number of international tribunals, including theUN-sponsored war crimes courts for Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

The Cambodian government andthe United Nations agreed to run the trials jointly in 2003.

Nearlytwo million Cambodians were executed, starved or were worked to deathwhen the Khmer Rouge ran Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Survivors of the so-called "killing fields" of the Khmer Rouge era have been pressing for decades for leaders of the hard-line Maoist movement to be tried.

Delays in convening trials havebeen blamed on the dire state of the Cambodian justice system, which is still trying to recover afterthe Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly all ofthe country's middle and upper classes.

The Khmer Rouge were toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979 but waged a vicious civil war for nearly 10 more years.

The death of the movement's supreme leader, Pol Pot, in a jungle hideout in 1998 brought the conflict to an end but also amplified fears that the aging leaders of the Khmer Rouge would die before they could be brought to justice.

A spokesman for the genocide tribunals said the swearing-in of judges should put those fears to rest.

Cambodians who survived the Khmer Rouge era welcomed news that judges were now ready to conduct the trials.

"I want to hear from the Khmer Rouge leaders why they killed and treated their own people so badly," said San Thann, a 58-year-old fishery official who lost two siblings.