Staff writer

Japan will provide about $4 million in aid in fiscal 1997, which ends March 31, to the United Nations Development Program to help stage a general election in Cambodia this summer, government sources said Thursday.

The sources also said Japan will consider offering additional election assistance -- probably several million dollars -- through the UNDP depending on developments in Cambodian politics in the runup to the vote.

"The planned provision of aid for the election will not be a one-off deal," one of the sources said. "If the Cambodian government fully meets the conditions for ensuring a free and fair vote, additional aid will be extended."

The $4 million will actually be granted to Cambodia in April or later for the installation of polling booths and the purchase of ballot boxes and some stationery needed for the July 26 vote, the sources said.

The sources also said Japan plans to dispatch an undetermined number of election monitors. Tokyo sent 41 election monitors to the war-torn Southeast Asian country for the last general election, which was held in May 1993 under U.N. supervision.

The Cambodian government, led by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, the country's strongman, has asked the international community to cover the bulk of the election costs, which it estimates at $22 million. It has specifically asked Japan for nearly $8 million.

The 15-nation European Union announced last month that it would provide about $11 million in economic assistance, including the personnel costs of sending election monitors.

Hun Sen has drawn harsh criticism from the international community for ousting his ruling coalition partner, First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, in a bloody coup last July.

But unlike the U.S. and some other donor nations that have indefinitely frozen aid for Cambodia to protest the July 6 coup, Japan, Cambodia's largest single aid donor, has disavowed punitive economic measures, although it has attached some conditions to continued aid, including the holding of a free and fair election.

At a meeting of Cambodian aid donors held in Paris shortly before the July coup, Japan pledged nearly $70 million in official development assistance to Cambodia, which is said to be relying on foreign aid for more than half of its government budget.

Meanwhile, the sources said, the Friends of Cambodia, an informal grouping of interested countries organized by the U.S., will convene again in the Philippines on Sunday to discuss the Cambodian situation. The group last met in New York at the beginning of last October, with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Hisashi Owada, Japan's ambassador to the U.N., attending, among other officials.

This weekend's meeting in the Philippines will be attended by senior officials from member governments, including Stanley Roth, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, the sources said.

Japan will dispatch Koreshige Anami, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian affairs bureau, the sources said. Anami visited Phnom Penh at the beginning of January for talks with Hun Sen and other Cambodian officials.