Letter From Cambodia: When the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, many believed that hope had also died in Cambodia of ever finding justice for the estimated 1.7 million people who perished during the 1975-79 "killing fields" regime.
During their brief but barbaric rule, Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a giant work camp in a failed attempt to build an agrarian utopia and a classless society rid of people the regime deemed their enemies.
The massive death toll from starvation, forced labour, disease and execution is still considered one of the 20th century's worst crimes against humanity.
It is still rare to find a Cambodian family which was not touched by Pol Pot's hordes. Yet, 24 years after the Khmer Rouge were chased from power by an advancing Vietnamese army, not one of the leaders of Cambodia's notorious communist movement have ever faced trial for the atrocities committed during their regime.
An agreement reached on Monday in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, between the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and a United Nations legal team could pave the way to belated justice and the long-awaited genocide tribunal many thought would never happen.
"We should not leave any stone unturned in searching how to bring healing to the people of Cambodia after the unspeakable horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime," Hans Corell, deputy secretary-general for UN legal affairs, said of the agreement reached after a weekend of marathon talks.
The talks were billed as an eleventh-hour, make-or-break showdown, and by Corell as a "last chance" for Cambodia and the UN to hammer out the draft of an agreement on the technical details and structures of a tribunal.
It is now up to the UN General Assembly and the Cambodian National Assembly to accept the draft of the agreement. It is not likely to be blocked by either, but it may take until the end of the year for the first foundations of a tribunal process to be laid, diplomats and government officials say.
Negotiations to establish a tribunal first began in 1997 but progressed at a glacial pace until finally melting down completely in February 2002, when UN legal experts abruptly abandoned talks, claiming that the trial envisioned by Cambodia would not be fair or impartial.
The UN was sceptical of the planned mixed tribunal system - which would include both Cambodian and UN judges.
Cambodia's court system is notoriously corrupt, prone to influence and under the political control of Hun Sen's government - several members of which once had links to the Khmer Rouge. Hun Sen was himself a middle-ranking Khmer Rouge commander until he fled the brutality of the regime.
Despite the upbeat feeling in official circles about the landmark agreement reached in Phnom Penh - won at the cost of compromise on both sides - Cambodia's top genocide researcher, Youk Chhang, said that it was a bitter-sweet victory.
"We cannot forget the people who died," said Youk Chhang. "It [the agreement\] is affecting each individual survivor and their family. You can feel that something has moved in their hearts. The question has always been posed. Now we are closer to an answer [for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge\]."
The maximum penalty for those convicted in the tribunal will be life imprisonment and when the first books of evidence are opened, the tribunal will not have far to look for suspects. Several surviving Khmer Rouge leaders still live freely, and comfortably, in Cambodia.
Khmer Rouge "Brother No 2", Nuon Chea (76), the onetime ideological guru of the movement and close confidant of Pol Pot, lives in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin in north-western Cambodia. He lives a short drive from the former Khmer Rouge deputy prime minister, Khieu Samphan (72).
In Phnom Penh, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, Ieng Sary, also 72, lives out his golden years in a palatial villa.
The ageing Khmer Rouge leaders were allowed to retire peacefully in return for laying down their weapons and defecting to the government in the mid-1990s.
Witnesses also will not be hard to find.
Bou Meng (61) was one of only a dozen prisoners who survived the Khmer Rouge prison, Tuol Sleng - a death camp where 16,000 people were jailed, tortured and finally executed at the mouth of open-pit graves on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Bou Meng's first day in the Khmer Rouge prison was the last day he saw his wife and two children, he said during a recent visit to the jail, which is now a genocide museum.
His wife was executed by prison guards and his two children went missing.
"I feel very saddened at the loss of my wife and two children. But I want to tell the world that I stayed alive and want to testify in any future trial," Bou Meng said. "I will tell how horrifying the Pol Pot regime was."