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Throttling back their Soviet T-54 and PT-76 Soviet tanks and ar mored personnel carriers, maintaining air control by means of captured U.S. F-5Es and A-37s, along with Soviet MiGs, the Vietnamese started a second-phase maneuver. They moved along rural routes into isolated areas seeking to surround and wipe out the pockets they had bypassed in the initial rush. Unable to bring ar tillery to bear on such swiftly moving foes, the Khmer offered only brief opposition and then faded back to secondary defenses.
As the Vietnamese last week continued mopping up, no trace of the Kampuchean leadership could be found. Pol Pot himself was reported in Siem Reap. Observers suspected that he and other leaders, acting on contingency plans, had slipped away to the mountains of the Elephant Range along the coast, a favorite retreat in old guerrilla days.
If they have really prepared such fallback positions, the scattered Khmer Rouge could become bothersome bees for the Vietnamese. But that was small consolation; they had lost their country as a result of General Dung's brilliant offensive, and all indications were that there will be a Vietnamese presence in Cambodia for a long time to come.
* Behind the resolution: Zambia, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Gabon, Jamaica and Nigeria.